


Bring Me Your Pain, Love

by pinkchubbiebunnie



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Autism, Autistic Reader, Canon Autistic Character, Canon Disabled Character, Disability, Disabled Reader, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, Fluff and Smut, Gay Panic, Oral Sex, Owen bashing (sorry Owen lovers), Physical Disability, Rough Oral Sex, Sexuality Crisis, Smut, chronically ill reader, using lesbian poetry to seduce someone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:21:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 38,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25878838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkchubbiebunnie/pseuds/pinkchubbiebunnie
Summary: Abby was a rock. Tough, hard, steady. Ultimately sure of who she was and what she was made of. At least, she thought she was a rock until she met you. Then she all too quickly discovered that she was a moving truck - made of a hard armored shell, but far too weak and crumbling on the inside, constantly on the move, desperate to tear away from her past and never look back - and you were a tree, sprouted in the middle of the road and determined to wreck her, wreck her entire sense of self so that she had to put herself back together piece by tiny fucking piece. Abby Anderson x Fem!Reader. Smut.Cross-posted on Tumblr.Poem used in the fic is not mine, it is Basket of Figs by Ellen Bass.
Relationships: Abby & Manny (The Last of Us), Abby (The Last of Us)/Reader
Comments: 20
Kudos: 109





	1. Pricking Just A Thread, Almost Invisible

**Author's Note:**

> idk what else I could even say about this fic at this point
> 
> it is just a giant explosion of my emotions with some smut in the middle. if you'd like a playlist to go along with it, go on my tumblr (pinkchubbiebunnie, the exact same username)

“Hey, wake up.” 

Abby was woken from an usually peaceful sleep by Manny’s voice, and a playful pat on the butt, both of which caused her to groan lightly and stir from her slumber, putting her arms underneath her to gain some stability back into reality as she woke. 

“What time is it?” She mumbled, throat closed off with sleep, hair wild and half out of the braid she had thrown it in after her shower the night before. 

“Before five, I think?” Manny guessed. “It’s still dark out.” 

Abby realized that to be true as she rose up from bed, the covers falling around her waist, inviting the cold air to bite at her bare torso as she rubbed her eyes. She groaned. Even though her nights were most often plagued with nightmares, when she was exhausted enough (or boozed up enough) she did enjoy sleep. And the night previous, Manny had invited her for “just one drink” when she had come in tired and still dripping from her shower, and even though she had wanted nothing more than to fall into her bed, tired - she had sat down with him. And they had ended up killing a bottle of Four Loko between the three of them when Nora came to check on a gash she had stitched up on Manny’s leg, getting distracted by the drinks and stories and the challenge of a strip poker rematch. 

“Why the fuck are you waking me up this early?” She questioned, grateful when he walked over to her bed and handed her a couple of Aspirin and a glass of water. He knew she would be hung over and acted upon instinct to care for her. She greedily took the medication and took down more than half the glass of water in a few gulps. 

“Isaac wants us up at the FOB.” He answered, going back to the other side of the room to gather his things. He was already fully dressed, and Abby felt gracefully behind in this morning routine.

She sprung into action, leaping out of bed and trying to force her sluggish body to gain full consciousness already. 

“Do you know why?” Abby asked instinctually, finding her cotton sports bra and slipping it on over her head. This knocked more of her already loose hair out of her braid, and she pulled the pointless hairband out of the bottom of the plait, going over to her nightstand to get a hairbrush to fix the tangled mess. 

“Apparently he’s finally setting up the library over there.” Manny informed her. “He needs us to lug a bunch of fucking boxes up to the top floor of the Apartments cause the elevator’s out again,” Manny chuckled at the idea, trying to find humor in the situation.

Abby growled under her breath as she tied the end of her now much neater braid. 

“Seriously? Lugging boxes of books all day?” 

One thing she hated about being close to Isaac and being known for her strong physique was the grunt work. There were certain jobs that Abby believed the maggots, the greenies, the bottom of the barrel newbies should only be tasked with because they were just pure tiring mindless physical labour. But Isaac was famously paranoid, and famously accused people he did not trust of snooping around in his stuff and even stealing from him. So, it was up to only his most trusted associates to spend their days moving heavy boxes for him and to smile and say ‘Yes, Sir’ about it. 

Abby heard a small clink against the counter of their kitchenette and a wet glug as something was poured into an empty cup. She looked over and saw Manny cracking eggs into a tall glass. Of course, his famous hangover cure. 

“You want some?” He offered. “I swung by Moriah’s early and got us some eggs, figured you’d appreciate it after that fourth drink last night.” 

Moriah was a farmer that had more than caught Manny’s eye, another one of his many paramours that fawned over his accent (among other things). 

Abby practically leapt across the room, waiting to grab the cup from him as he added the additional ingredient - a few drops of tabasco sauce. It was absolutely vile; raw eggs and hot sauce, but it made for one hell of a shock to the system against the sense slugging depressants that were alcohol and sleep. 

“I’m sure all you went there for was eggs.” Abby gave him a knowing look, and he smirked back at her. “How do you even have time for sleep? We were up until like two, and you squeezed in a morning booty call? How fast do you cum?” 

Manny, hand poised to give her the glass, snatched it away at her words. “Hey! None for you if you give me that kind of sass!” 

Abby put her hands up defensively. “Sorry,” 

Manny handed the cup over and Abby chugged down the slimy mixture, wincing with disgust as she pulled the glass away from her lips. It was horrible, but something she had done so many times before that she could more than bear it now. 

“And you can’t blame me for wanting to get an eyeful of someone beautiful before we have to spend the day with that crusty old bat from the library,” Manny chuckled at his own joke as Abby put the glass down on the counter, walking back to her bed to find some clothes. 

Abby cringed when the realization really hit her, taking a moment to fully get through the slow cogs of her morning brain. 

“Fuck. You don’t mean that cranky old librarian is in charge of this bullshit?” She picked up the nearest shirt, which happened to be a faded white tee shirt that she’d cut the sleeves off, and slipped it on over her head. 

Manny chugged down his own eggs before he replied. “That’s what I’ve been led to believe.” 

Abby smiled sarcastically at him, shoving her feet into the closest pair of pants. “Well that’s just the fucking icing on the cake, isn’t it?” 

“You are so pleasant in the morning, Abs.” 

“Bite me.” 

She finished dressing herself, and gathered her things before heading out into the dark morning with a way too pleasant and alert Manny. 

She definitely felt ready to take on the morning now, even if she didn’t really want to. 

… 

Abby and Manny made it out to the FOB in decent time, with no trouble, the morning sun just kissing over the sky as they hopped out of the truck on the other side of the gates. 

They wasted no time getting to where they were needed, grabbing a cup of coffee from one of the maintenance stations and chugging it along the way. 

“What the fuck,” Abby mumbled to herself as they entered the Apartments. 

Instead of being greeted with the usual putrid smell of urine and feces, Abby was overwhelmed instead by the sting of bleach in her nostrils, and sight of file boxes piled almost up to the ceiling. No doubt the bleach smell was coming from the cells up the hallway, and that Isaac had the prisoners moved because he was paranoid of even them seeing his private library come to life. But what was more concerning, aside from Isaac becoming more unhinged as the years went on (Abby continuously decided that she would worry about that later) was the giant mass of boxes in front of her. 

“We have to move all these?” She gestured to the giant wall, wondering if there were more layers not yet visible behind this one, piled up in the foyer to add to her workload. 

“That was the plan, yes.” A strange, muffled voice came from behind the boxes, and Abby, though she had not spent much time around the library, because the aging librarian was notoriously known for her unsavoury attitude, could easily recognize that this voice did not belong to an old woman.

She immediately became curious as to who it belonged to. 

She glanced sideways at Manny and could easily tell with the kind of silent conversation that only happened between best friends that he was thinking along the same lines. Wondering where the librarian was, who the replacement was. Wondering who they would inevitably be spending all day with. 

She took off her backpack and tossed it carelessly on the ground somewhere, no longer needing it, and began disassembling the box tower to find, to her disappointment, more boxes, searching for the source of this mysterious voice. Manny joined her actions, naturally following her lead. 

She was almost startled when she found your head among the sea of faded cardboard. You were like an adorable little literary mole, hiding among the books, using one of the taller stacks as an impromptu desk. With your notebook laid across the flimsy cardboard cover of the filebox, pen in hand, checking things off what Abby could see was a very long list. Taking inventory of all these boxes, she very quickly put together. 

“Definitely not the crusty old bat.” Manny murmured, hoping only Abby would hear, having taken only a short glance at your womanly figure hunched over the box, even with you mostly facing them, Abby knew he was catching an eyeful down the healthy V neck of your top. She knew exactly how his mind worked sometimes, and she hated it. 

She elbowed him, giving him a sharp glare that encouraged him to be respectful of you. He put his hands up defensively as if he had done nothing wrong, before he started rubbing at his ribs, where a bruise would surely be forming. 

It was only then that you looked up, seemingly done with whatever you had to write in your notebook. The first thing Abby noticed about you was something a person didn’t usually have among their facial features: two obnoxiously bright orange pieces of foam, what Abby quickly identified as a pair of foam earplugs, sticking out of your nose, seemingly blocking off those holes as makeshift nose plugs. And she was immediately endeared when you smiled at her, waving your hand in a small greeting, seemingly not giving a damn that you looked so silly with your weird nose plugs. Abby felt a joyous tingle in her soul at your carelessness of what they thought of you. 

You immediately seemed like the type of person she would enjoy being around. 

“Morning,” You greeted both of them, the strange tone of your voice now easily explained by the foam blockages in your nose. 

“Is there like some kind of contamination we should know about, or…?” Manny gestured to his own nose for reference, fishing for an explanation about the giant eye sore in your otherwise normal, even beautiful appearance. 

You looked confused for a moment, and Abby saw it in your eyes when the realization as to what he meant occurred in your brain. 

“Oh.” You motioned with your pen to the foam sticking out of your nose. Apparently you had forgotten they were even there. “Right. It’s nothing you should be worried about.” You assured the pair. “The bleach smell gives me migraines. I had to make sure I wouldn’t get one and end up puking my guts up all over the books." 

You laughed it off, making a lighthearted joke about your ailment and how it seemed to be more of an inconvenience for others than it was for you. 

Abby could see the pain dancing in your eyes, even if it was just for a moment before you looked back down at your notebook, and she felt her stomach twist. Perhaps it was a normal amount of human empathy, or (she hoped not) the idea of someone as sweet as you falling victim to something so disabling and horrendous. 

Abby cleared her throat, eager to move on from the swell of emotion that was threatening her. 

“What happened to the librarian?” Abby asked the obvious question, wondering if someone as adorable and easy to get along with as you would be leading them for the day, rather than the plight of unpleasant energy they had been expecting. 

“Oh, she died.” You informed them, seeming all too casual about it. As though you were telling them about the weather or that one of their shoes was untied. 

Manny snickered quietly, and Abby resisted the urge to reprimand him again. Mostly because she believed that what he found funny was not the actual death itself, but your absolutely underwhelming reaction to it. 

With both of them not yet responding to your statement, you felt the need to further explain it. 

“It’s okay, she was like 94 or something. I’ve been training to take over this job for a while now.” You explained, closing the cover of your notebook and picking it up. You were talking with vigor, and when you paused only for a breath and neither of them responded, you felt yourself ramble on past the point without even meaning to. “I used to work on the farm, but I’m not really much help ‘cause of my disability. I can’t do any heavy lifting or anything, so I mostly just cleaned up poop, and everyone called me Shit Bag. I did get to name all the cows, though. Even though cows don’t really need names.” Abby grinned at you, and you absolutely crumbled under even that small bit of attention from her. Which made you continue rambling on hopelessly. “And like I don’t really have any medical training or anything. And they kicked me out of arms training when I almost blew my thumb off. Plus, ya know, disabled kids stay inside and read books all day, so it’s kind of like I’ve been training for this job my whole life.” 

By the time you were done, overwhelmed by the pairs’ eyes on you, clicking your pen with nerves, you realized you had probably vastly overshared and gone into the territory of being annoying. 

What you didn’t know was that Abby was almost overwhelmed by how adorable she found you, wanting nothing more than to just listen to your cute stories all day. She did want to ask about the nature of your disability, eager to know if there was anything she could do to help you, but found that to be too personal of a question to ask so forwardly. Even if you didn’t seem shy about revealing personal details about yourself. 

“You know what?” Manny broke Abby’s fixation on you, stepping forward and grabbing up one of the heavy boxes. “You guys can stand there and make goo-goo eyes at each other. I’m actually gonna get some work done.” 

Abby flushed slightly, wanting so badly to chuck something at the back of his head as he navigated his way through the maze of boxes toward the stairwell. 

“What floor is this going to, Shit Bag?” He called out, mocking you with the old nickname you had revealed to them. 

You pressed a hand to your forehead, instantly regretting your oversharing. 

“All the way to the top.” You called back, your voice sounding even funnier when you strained against the plugs in your nose. 

You heard him swear under his breath in another language, and you giggled to yourself at his most instant karma for the name calling. 

“I can get him to stop that.” Abby told you when your attention was brought back to her. “He is joking. He’s like that. But you don’t really know him well enough for it to seem like a joke. I can just get him to stop using that stupid nickname.” 

She felt oddly protective of you. Felt this instinct blooming inside her that wanted to defend you, wanted to keep this adorable sweet thing she had found so absolutely sweet and adorably pure.

You shrugged. “It’s fine.” You looked up at Abby again, and found yourself captured in the intense gaze she was giving you. 

It made you weak, and you backed down from it in seconds, opening your notebook and pretending to look at something inside it. 

“What should I call you?” It was Abby’s smooth way of asking for your name. She felt strange that she didn’t know it already. That, of all the faces at the WLF compound, yours had blended into the background of her life. 

“Y/N.” You told her. “But you can call me whatever, weird nicknames really don’t bother me.” 

“It’s a nice name. I wouldn’t replace it with some stupid nickname.” 

You locked eyes with her once more, feeling your throat dry up in an instant. 

Abby was the one to break away this time, forgetting to even introduce herself (not that you would need an introduction to Isaac’s favourite, this tank of a woman who was beloved by every Wolf you knew) before she picked up a box and scurried away with it. 

… 

You had only gotten through a half dozen boxes when someone you weren’t familiar with came to take one of your heavy lifters off the project, claiming they needed help with something more pressing - and Manny was quick to volunteer as soon as the idea of leaving was thrown out there. 

He gave Abby a wink as he walked out, and you wondered what that was about for only a moment before you were overwhelmed by the monument of books and having only one person to help you with the task. 

"It’s okay. I’m pretty sure we can handle this,” Abby told you with a smile as she placed a box down where you wanted it, taking the lid off and beginning to take out the books - which was not a necessary step on her part, but you had yet to find a way to tell her that she was working too hard because her insistence to help you just seemed so sweet. 

After that, you and Abby made good conversation; especially since you were far enough away from the bleach smell now to remove your nose plugs and your voice sounded normal again. You shelved the books where they belonged in the large room Isaac had picked and made up to be his library, and Abby went up and down the stairs collecting the many, many, many heavy boxes. You had to force yourself to keep your eyes on the titles and keep your mind on the organization when she started to sweat, and when, at one point she lifted the bottom of her shirt to wipe sweat off her forehead and you caught a sinful eyeful of her glistening tight stomach, and the way her hips cut into a godly V down to her low hanging pants. 

You tried to cleanse your mind by staring at the cover of a rifle manual and then offered her some water, which she was thankful for, and you smacked yourself hard inside when you felt those schoolgirl butterflies at the appearance of her toothy smile. 

Between her trips up and down the stairs, you talked about everything. Strangely enough, it was so easy for her to open up to you when it seemed like you weren’t properly listening. When your back was turned to her, when it seemed like you were more focused on telling her where to put the boxes she was bringing in or tediously putting each book in its place. 

She found herself opening up to you about what assholes her friends could be sometimes, but how they were closer knit than most blood families and had some of the most amazing times together. About how she had been a Firefly and how she had traveled all the way from Utah to live here, and even about her father’s death. Just a bit. 

And though you were busy, you listened well. You absorbed every bit of herself that Abigail Anderson was willing to give to you, soaked up every detail like a sponge. You didn’t look at her often, trying not to scare her away. Even with your limited people skills, sensing that she was the timid type - at least when it came to emotions. And you could be a handful and more if you weren’t careful. So like you would with a deer in the forest, you stuck out your palm invitingly and let her come to you - let her get comfortable in your domain and reveal as much of herself to you as she wanted. 

And of course, you tried to gently share yourself with her. Dosing out your muchness in palatable tastes, you told her about your childhood, about growing up on a farm out West with cows and cats and pigs, and what it was like navigating this dark world when for the most part, all your talents were seen as useless and you were labeled as a burden. Told her about your interest in books and what some of your favorites were. You told her about your autism, and how it gave you a perspective on the world no one else around you seemed to have, and how it helped you find the light in these ever darkening times. 

She seemed to like that. 

… 

It seemed like no time at all, and the sea of boxes made their way upstairs as you tried your best to unpack the massive load and stay on top of organizing them all, and the daylight hours dissolved away.

Abby was sending the empty boxes back to be reused, and as the room emptied out more, and the boxes became fewer, it became easier for things to get organized along the way. 

She stood in the doorway, just on her way back up from dumping off a few more empty boxes downstairs, and found herself enamored with the image of you when she came back up to resume the work. You were absolutely immersed in your element; facing one of the shelves with your profile to her, swaying adorably on the spot, having found a particularly interesting book that you were taking a moment to read, opened to a random page. And she couldn’t help but capture this image of you in her mind - your face stony in concentration, chewing your lip between your teeth, all the contemplation in the world flashing through your eyes as you processed whatever text you were reading. 

Abby briefly wondered how much greatness you held inside your mind - just how many books you had read that she never even had the chance to know existed, before she shook herself from her daydream and forced herself back to work. 

She was still in the process of coming back to earth when she tripped over a fairly light box that seemed to be placed rather carelessly in the middle of the room. She bent down to take a look at the spilled contents she had accidentally kicked over in her stride. 

It looked strangely out of place in the collection of firearms manuals, histories of warfare, and advanced chemistry books that she knew weren’t there for self betterment or light studying. No, this was a small collection of notebooks, all with gaudy brightly coloured patterns on the covers and a healthy collection of peeling, faded stickers decorating them, each well used up, pages thick with ideas, along with a few old looking classics with gold foil details on their covers that Abby thought were far too pretty to belong in this world. She picked one of them up and read the title: 101 Erotic Poems. 

It surprised her. Mostly because she had never really considered poetry to be… erotic before. She mostly just considered it to be old and boring. She almost wanted to open the book and read it, her curiosity of what an erotic poem might be like growing more and more inside her mind, but then her good moral conscious twanged hard inside her chest. This was someone else’s stuff. Even if it didn’t seem like it belonged to Isaac - it wasn’t right to snoop. 

She started piling the books back inside the box. 

“Are these Isaac’s, too?” She couldn’t help that part of her curiosity from breaching the surface, the glaring femininity of the books throwing her off so very much. 

Her words caught your attention from where you were standing, and you closed your book and put it down to give her your full attention. You felt your stomach twist when you saw her grasping one of your private journals, having no idea what she was doing with it, or how it even ended up this far from home without your knowledge. 

Someone like her - someone so physical, someone who detressed through activity, by putting their mind away rather than diving deeper into it - probably wouldn’t understand, but she might as well have been holding a piece of your heart in her hands, and it scared the ever loving fuck out of you. Especially with how carelessly she tossed it into the box, putting the lid back on and shutting it into darkness. 

“Oh my god.” You mumbled quietly to yourself, racing over to her in order to try and seize the box without her knowing how truly important it was to you. “That’s mine.” You told her. You were trying not to let the instantaneous pulsating stress show through in your voice, but Abby saw it a mile away. She saw you. She saw the way your eyes locked onto the box like a hot target and the way your hands played with the hem of your shirt, itchy to take it from her but knowledgeable and ever aware not to commit that one deal breaking social crime - being rude. 

“Oh, here.” Abby slid the box to your feet, seeing the relief that came over your shoulders the second that it was back with you. You couldn’t resist kneeling down to check if anything was missing since you had last seen it. “I wasn’t looking through it, I just tripped over it, and everything came out." 

Abby was quick to proclaim her innocence, happy to find a fast friend in you and terrified to mess that up too soon. 

"I believe you.” You stated your mind clearly, preoccupied with taking an inventory of the box. 

That’s what Abby liked about you - you were blatant. Most of the other people she hung around faulted her for things; for drinking too much, for being too violent, for not being able to move past her father’s death. But they never said these things to her face in a way she could argue with. Only in passing. Only in a way that could come off as a joke, as a harmless pebble tossed at her regardless of their friendship. Abby tried not to think of how those pebbles gathered into a boulder over time. One that she was forced to carry on her back, heavy, weighing her days down. 

But you seemed not to have time for jokes or for being with people if your intentions with them were not spelled out and genuine before you. Abby warmed up to this quickly. To not having to decode you like some great mystery. 

“This stuff came out of my apartment.” You sighed, putting the top back on the box yourself, and standing back up to your full height with a mighty stretch. 

“Then what’s it doing here?” Abby wondered out loud.

“I guess it got mixed in with the rest of these just cause it’s the same kind of file box?” It was the most adequate guess you could make. “I mean, I just finished moving into the office behind the library, and I used a bunch of these to move my stuff, so I guess the dingbats who loaded the boats went into the office and took my stuff,” You tried to laugh it off, trying not to think about the invasion of privacy and the potential that your carefully organized room had been disturbed. 

“You’d think it wouldn’t take a genius to load up some boxes,” Abby made a joke, distracting you from the inner peril you were having about your room back at the Base. 

“Yeah.” You giggled, trying not to show your anxiety or reveal the strange unimportant nature of exactly what was causing it. “Well, you’re really smart and you’re already doing a lot better than them," 

You had no idea why it was your instinct to compliment her, but the words came so naturally to you that you decided not to double back on them, and simply flashed her a smile before you scooted your box of personal belongings across the room to take them home later. 

Abby felt something strange inside her. A feeling she couldn’t really describe. No one had ever called her smart before. Of course, no one had called her dumb before either. No one ever had a reason to. She had always just been floating somewhere in the middle, especially with her choice to pursue being a soldier rather than to deepen her medical knowledge and spend her time with Nora and Mel in the medical tent. 

She wanted to take it at face value, wanted to take it as you riffing off her joke, just making conversation - but some part of her preened under the compliment. The part of her ego that was never seen for being intelligent finally grew to see some light with this one silly compliment, and she felt the sickness of butterflies bloom in her stomach. Something she hadn’t felt since she’d had her first kiss during spin the bottle back in Salt Lake. 

She wanted to ignore this, to push the feelings away. So she moved forward with the conversation as she stared at your back, you busy once again shelving books, she herself now completely distracted from being able to do any work at all. 

"That uh, that book looked interesting.” Abby stumbled over her words, wanted to hit herself for how buffoonishly dumb she sounded in the light of what you’d just said. “I didn’t know erotic poetry was even a thing," 

You felt your cheeks heating up at the aforementioned book. Of course that would be the one she noticed. Well, you just thanked God she hadn’t opened and read any of your journals. Especially the one with your amateur smut fantasies written in it. 

"Maybe I can show it to you later.” These words sounded incredibly casual coming from you, and you had no idea when you had become so smooth in something that sounded even close to flirting. You wanted to cheer and smack yourself all at the same time. 

“Um, yeah. Sounds good," 

Facing the shelf, you couldn’t quite pick up on the nervous quake in Abby’s voice, and only barely caught the small thud she made as she tripped over her own feet, stumbling back out into the hallway, trying to busy herself with more work to avoid picking apart the intention behind what you’d just said. 

… 

You and Abby worked well into the evening, you having to send her to fetch some small battery powered lamps to light your operation because electricity hadn’t fully been set up on this floor yet. With darkness encasing most of the area and the boxes emptying out onto the shelves (not as quickly as Abby would have expected, as you were very particular about the system you had picked out and the way it needed to be executed), Abby took the time to try and help you as best she could, lifting what was heavy and putting things up high where you couldn’t quite reach, you continuously thanking her and lamenting that you had forgotten your step stool. 

At one point, Abby looked across the room and noticed you with a foot perched precariously on one of the lower shelves, trying to boost a book up onto the highest shelf where you wanted it. Once again without asking for her help, as many times as she had insisted that you would not be an annoyance to her. As adorable as it was to watch you gently bobbing your bum up and down, with one foot still on the ground peddling you off the floor, not completely willing to bet your safety on the shelf’s stability - Abby had to step in before you got hurt. 

She acted on instinct without saying a word, walking up behind you and placing a hand on your waist above your cutely perched butt, holding you so bravely, so intimately and daring to put her body so close to yours as she reached up on the tips of her toes. This act squeezed any last bit of air out from between your two bodies - and brushed her hand gently against your cold fingers to shelf the book where you had placed it. 

Any ounce of something you had once known as oxygen had left your lungs, displaced by the hot wall of her body pressed up against you, her warm fingers a surprisingly gentle presence on your hip. The two of you had been opening up to each other all day, had been comfortable enough to reveal your secrets; but this small act of intimate touch made you feel more naked to her than you had to anyone in years. It was thrilling and terrifying all in one fantastic swoop, and made you dizzy in such a beautiful way that even if it was only for a moment, it made the ache of hard day’s work, the ache of a lifetime, dull in your body and made you want to chase this feeling with her like you had never wanted to chase anything else. 

You gasped gently when she pulled away. 

You wondered if she heard you, but decided to busy yourself instead with unmounting the bookshelf and getting back to work. 

Abby was almost swept up in a panic. What had she even been thinking, touching you like that? What if she had just completely violated your personal space and you were too polite to tell her that she was being a creepy asshole? Why did she find your butt cute? 

But she didn’t have time to dive any deeper into this panic, because she was distracted by you yet again. 

She watched you reaching a hand to rest on your lower back for what must have been the dozenth time in that hour, letting a harsh breath out through gritted teeth and stretching your body from side to side awkwardly before you bent down to pick more books out of a box on the floor, and she frowned. Noticing the obvious signs of your pain, she felt a heaviness in the pit of her stomach. 

Your body didn’t function like hers did. She could lift heavy things with ease, run far distances without being in danger of her body collapsing. She could even push herself beyond her known physical limits just for fun. You were in pain, at least somewhat, all the time. Abby couldn’t even really imagine what that was like. She woke up sore from working out or from a particular rough day of work often, but it usually wore off within a few hours. She couldn’t imagine what life would be like with a constant pain thrumming through her body twenty four seven. 

Abby wished her medical knowledge expanded to your type of condition. Then maybe she would know a unique remedy to ease your pain after these long hours of hard work. But it was never the type of thing she felt the need to study up on when she had seen people coming into the hospital with gunshot wounds, crushed limbs, and gashes through their flesh. Those kinds of things were emergent, damaging, but ultimately temporary. The kind of thing that you either die from or heal from, maybe with some damage in between, but nothing like an invisible pain that plagues you from the moment you’re born that you have to learn to live with. Wounds can be tended to, but Abby knew she couldn’t take your body apart piece by piece to find the thing that made you hurt and take it out. And that kind of powerlessness made her ache in a way she hadn’t felt since her father died. 

"Hey.” She said quietly, trying to catch your attention from where you were lining up the spines of some of the books. 

You turned to her. 

“Are you okay?" 

This had always been a loaded question for you. Your social training always told you that responding with ‘yeah’ or 'I’m fine’ were more than adequate to satisfy whoever asked, because early fumbles with this pipe bomb of a question taught you that more often than not, the person asking it was not at all prepared for the iceberg they were cracking into by asking a chronically ill person if they were actually doing okay. 

You dared to glance up into her eyes, and saw the shine of genuine concern bubbling up to the surface of her beautiful pools of blue. Genuine concern for you and the state of your well being. 

You sighed, deciding to answer her impossible question with more of a ponderance of your own. 

"Depends on what you mean…” You released a small giggle along with your tired words, still trying to make some lightweight, palatable comedy of the ocean of pain that you sometimes drowned in. You had found over the years that if you didn’t at least attempt this, many would abandon conversation with you. Many would abandon you altogether. 

It wasn’t nearly at the level of falsity of 'I’m fine’, but it did not even begin to answer her question. 

Abby took a moment to calculate how she would respond. 

“Are you… in pain?” It seemed obvious enough to her what the answer really was, but she was curious as to how truthful you would be. 

She wouldn’t entirely blame you if you did lie. There had been many times when she had been injured and in pain and more than eager to hide it from her friends in order to carry on like normal and contribute instead of needing to be taken care of. Abby couldn’t imagine what it would be like if this was the case every single day of her life; having to struggle through pain to work in order to contribute something to try and feel worthy, to not be labeled as a burden. In fact, she had found it seemed that you worked twice as hard, without excuse, as anyone she had ever met. 

You shrugged. “A bit.” 

You still weren’t sure if it was a fear of sounding overdramatic, a fear of sounding like a broken record, or even a fear of being too honest with yourself about the reality you lived in, but you always tended to vastly undervalue your pain when speaking about it out loud. It seemed like the safest way of dealing with it - never give the beast more power if you never speak its name. Though it already had an overwhelming amount of power over every single inch of your body; perhaps you just wouldn’t let it take over your mind, too. 

“My back is messed up all the time.” You explained to her casually, turning around again and reaching to lift your shirt by scrunching the fabric up around the shoulders, revealing the skin of your back to her. 

Your general dissonance in human interaction told you that this was a good idea, to give her a visual to pair with the thing you had mentioned. Not a single alarm going off in your mind about it being awkward or improper to partially strip in front of someone you had only met today. 

Especially considering the band of your bra had been revealed in the process, and even though it was a plain white, cotton garment, Abby found this to be somewhat scandalizing. But more distracting than the presence of this undergarment was the state of your back - the very obvious source of your pain. Swelling that was very obviously more than harmless fat, twisted, protruding bone that it did not take an xray to see was more than out of place, exhausted muscles struggling to keep everything from falling apart. 

Scoliosis. Abby didn’t need to be an expert in orthopedics to see this clearly. Especially because one of her dad’s nurses had struggled with the same ailment and he had been trying to treat her with varying success. 

Now, actually having a visual, such a harsh one to pair with the idea of your pain, Abby felt her throat tighten. It felt bitterly selfish; wanting to cry at your suffering. But she felt that small, powerless feeling flowing through her again, because this was absolutely something she could not help you with. 

Eventually you lowered your shirt and turned back to Abby, giving her a weak smile, trying to keep a somewhat light aura to the room. You could see the glassiness to her eyes and wanted to slap yourself. Of course you had upset her. 

“Oh my god, I’m so-” 

“Don’t be.” She wouldn’t let you apologize for her inappropriate reaction. She cleared her throat, quickly rallying from this nasty slip of emotion. You didn’t need to see her like this - sloppy, undone. Even if the ghost of a tear in her eye and the slight trace of something that could have been classed as shakiness in her voice were nowhere near sloppy, she wouldn’t allow it. She didn’t need anyone to see her like this. “Let’s just take a break for now, okay? We probably both need it.” 

Abby was running on only eggs, hot sauce and a few cups of black coffee, so the idea of breaking for food was more than appealing.

You agreed to her inviting proposition, suddenly remembering that either of you hadn’t really eaten all day. And soon enough, the two of you were cozied up on a free space of floor under one of the few windows, the lamps brought over to help light the little picnic you had made using one of the overturned boxes as a table, having a delightful late dinner of trail mix, granola bars, powdered juice mix heavily mixed into your canteens, and some of the WLF Base cook’s oddly delightful, though kind of gross looking - homemade fig tarts. 

“-and we didn’t know that the wheels on the gurney were loose, and when Nora tried to stop him at the finish line, the momentum just kept him going and he sped right out of her hands, down the fucking hallway, and of course, this just happened to be the moment that someone came through the fucking door,” Abby was giggling as she recounted a story from her days at the Salt Lake Outpost. 

It had been a time of training hard; learning all the proper ins and outs of gun safety so they could protect themselves, reading medical journals and trying to retain as much knowledge as possible so they could try and save lives, actually practicing small things like stitches on the wounded soldiers so they wouldn’t become squeamish at the sight of blood. But of course, they had been young. So they got up to their fair share of shit when they got bored. 

You were laughing along with her, finding the story more than amusing, especially the way she told it. There was a small ghost haunting the back of your mind; something that mourned for a childhood like hers. One with a close connection to a group of friends that you could laugh with and joke around with like that, but you supposed your loner ways had benefited you somehow. You probably wouldn’t be having a romantically lit dinner in a small, private library with a gorgeous woman like this if you hadn’t spent your entire childhood sequestered off somewhere reading books instead of socializing. Part of your mind wondered if she considered this to be romantic as well, but you put that part to sleep for now.

“Who was it?” You wondered out loud, trying to silence your racing mind and focus on the beauty that was Abby instead.

“Our friend Jordan.” Abby told you, letting out another giggle at the memory. “The end of the gurney smashed his knee and he ended up on crutches for weeks,” 

You had met Jordan before, and found him rather unsavoury. Part of you enjoyed this story simply for the slapstick injury of him within it. Though this was Abby’s friend, so you chose not to voice this opinion. 

“And uh, that’s how we got gurney racing effectively banned.” She finished with another laugh, making you echo this back at her. 

She looked magical in this moment. The dim lighting of the small battery lamps reflecting golden tones onto her pale freckled skin and golden hair, some strands of which had come loose from her neat braid over the day to fly free and tease you with their privilege of getting to brush her face in intimate ways you probably never would. Her smile was an expansion of plush pink lips and a glimmer of white teeth, but more than that it was a radiance of light, genuine happiness that lifted the pinchable nature of her cheeks and reached her eyes, making you happy in a contagious way that made you want to scream. 

She was beautiful. 

She was the type of beautiful that was irrefutable. The type of beautiful that lasted for centuries in someone’s mind. The type of beautiful that you could write sonnets upon sonnets about that future lovers would quote to themselves in hopes of having someone half as beautiful as her. The type of beautiful men would fight and die for. You just prayed that if men did fight over her, it would be worthless. 

You felt words swelling up on your tongue, and pushed them down. Calling her beautiful, declaring it in the intensely passionate way you were currently experiencing it - it would scare her off. Whether she was gay or not. The kind of high level intensity you could bring to your enjoyment of things, whether it was people or projects or something as simple as character in a novel was frightening to someone who had never experienced it before. 

You made an active decision to dial back this intensity, and go with a different kind of compliment that would show your fondness all the same. 

“I really liked hanging out with you today.” 

You knew it hadn’t been her choice, to spend the day with you, not as if you were great friends spending time together for fun. But you wanted to communicate this nonetheless - how much you had enjoyed it. You were someone who enjoyed your time alone more than anything; hated the noise and fuss and anxiety that people brought, had gotten used to loneliness over many carefully curated years of your childhood, had realized long ago that the dull ache of going without interaction was much better than the sting of rejection, or the bitter shock of realizing you had fucked up a major social interaction and now you would be mocked as a freak, or had hurt someone’s feelings unintentionally. 

But Abby made you differently somehow. All the noise that buzzed in your head when you were around people normally - the wurr of anxiety, the constant stream of rules you had determined telling you what to do during interactions, the sirens blaring in your head as you judged yourself on the quality of your interactions and the things you said, good or bad, high functioning, well passing human, or stone cold robot in a paper thin disguise. Abby somehow made the noise go away. Made your mind quiet down and made you simply able to listen to her. Made you able to sit back and indulge in her beauty, made you comfortable enough within a few hours of meeting her to give her pieces of you that you had ever even shown your own parents before. Very, very few people had ever been able to do that in your lifetime. 

So, in many ways, this was a bigger compliment than she could ever know. 

“Really?” Abby was initially surprised by your words.

As much as she had enjoyed the pleasure of your company herself, she did think of it as work. The two of you being forced to be around each other by circumstance, rather than by choice. She did wonder from time to time how many of the people currently in her life would choose to be around her if given one, and if not for the Outpost, the Fireflies, for her father having to train everyone in basic medical skills, which caused them all to spend so much more time together so young. 

“Yeah.” You affirmed with a smile. “You’re a really nice person. I like being around you.” 

These words came so easily from your mouth, completely unafraid to speak the truth you felt and assure your new friend that you would hopefully like to keep her as one. Of course some part wanted her as more than that - absolutely unable to deny the physical attraction you felt towards her sculpted body and soft, beautiful face, wanting to spend endless hours in the warmth of her and the calming nest of ease she put you in. But that was a distant dream for now. 

The words weighed on Abby like a pile of bricks. It wasn’t something she liked to think about often, but for the most part, she didn’t consider herself to be a very good person. Of course the killing weighed on her mind, even if it was for the protection of her life and the lives of people she loved. But even past that, she couldn’t really think of herself as someone who was very - nice. Abby always thought of herself as a bitter person, even if she tried not to constantly drag those around her down by it. 

She wasn’t sure if she wanted to correct this false impression of her you had somehow formed, or delight in it. Maybe you were right and she was the one who was wrong. Maybe she could be a nice person after all. 

She didn’t want to think about it too much.

Instead, she found herself focusing on what had ended up in her hand. One of the fig tarts from your little picnic. 

“You know, these figs can look way too much like poop if you look at them for too long,” She derailed the conversation to a very unsavory place, then, oddly enough, choosing to take a bite of the food that she had just compared to something so unappetizing. 

You laughed, finding her strange choice of conversation to be quite thought provoking. 

Where it led your thoughts, though, was very different from anything she could have predicted. 

“Figs are actually a sexual symbol in literature,” You explained, speaking easily about the taboo topic without a single shred of embarrassment. “A lesbian symbol, actually.” You were more than excited to teach about the topic, but held back, waiting for her to engage with you, to show a common interest before you went full throttle on your knowledge of fruit as lesbain symbolism. 

It was actually quite a dangerous topic, seeing as it was the one thing you were entirely curious about that had not come up all day. Abby’s sexuality. You, being such a proud lover of the female form, were growing ever curious if the vibes that you got from Abby were at all correct, or if you were just making them up in your head in an effort to make your crush on her seem more reasonable. 

You remembered distantly that perhaps you had heard about her dating her friend Owen when you had first joined the WLF, and they did seem incredibly close, but she had not mentioned it to you in all the stories she had told during your many hours together. Perhaps ashamed of it, perhaps regretful of the breakup, or, what you hoped most of all - that for once your memory had failed you, and she had never dated him at all. 

Abby took pause; freezing completely for a moment to process the words you’d said, food halfway chewed in her mouth, crumbs adorably hanging from her lip. If she wasn’t so sure of your straightforward and honest nature, she would almost think you were going on some kind of fishing expedition. But there was nothing to fish for. Lesbain symbolism meant nothing to her; she had dated Owen. She had been with Owen for many long, tedious months of her life. She liked… men. 

“That’s, uh, cool.” Abby said, her voice slightly muffled with the sticky fruit and crumbling pastry as she resumed chewing. 

You were unable to observe a single hint at the awkwardness coming off her whatsoever. You took her pause as simple time to think, and of course you were way too caught up in the puddle of your own excitement to try and pick up on her body language. Now having this verbal permission to move forward with the rant you’d been holding back that was building up inside you by the second, you let your mouth loose. 

“Well, just in general, figs are a sexual symbol historically throughout art and literature,” You explained, recalling some of the art history books you had read. “In Western culture, more so for biblical reasons, because when Adam and Eve were corrupted with the first sins, and they realized their sexuality, they covered their nudity with fig leaves, and so in biblical inspired art, figs are associated with the genitalia of both men and women. In Greek or Roman mythology, it’s more so because of the fruit’s association with Dionysus, the God of wine, drinking, and parties, especially because it’s believed that he drank early wines made partially from figs. And because of an association with Satyrs, which is like a half man, half goat thing, which apparently are like a symbol of sexual desire. Which is really weird, cause I’d never wanna fuck a goat man,” 

Abby listened to your well informed rambling with great interest, giggling at your last comment. 

“Yeah, me either.” She added on, agreeing with your sentiment. 

“But like it’s so interesting, because eventually figs became a stealth lesbian symbol in classic poetry.” Your face lit up as you explained this to her, and she found herself becoming slightly uncomfortable at the mention of lady loving once again. You, again, did not notice the way her muscles stiffened and the way she absolutely could not look at you, and ploughed on forward with your dump of knowledge onto her. “It’s actually because fresh figs look like a pussy when cut in half. Supposedly.” 

Abby choked on her own spit and felt a unique heat creeping up her neck at the way you said ‘pussy’. So incredibly blatant. So shameless. So dirty coming off your lips. If she wasn’t mistaken, she almost felt a heat biting between her legs with just that one word coming from your lips, and she wanted to smack herself. She wanted to get up and run away. She felt the bitter terror of the unknown gripping her, and it made her never want to see you again. 

You did not miss the flinch she made with that choke, and the purposeful lack of eye contact afterwards, and felt the heavy shock biting at your lungs that you had made some kind of terrible social blunder without even knowing. 

“Fuck, am I not supposed to say pussy? Is that rude?” Your voice was thick with worry, rushing to correct your mistake, still desperate to keep Abby as a friend. 

Abby was slightly more prepared this time, though your words still made her tongue turn to sandpaper and made the blush creep even farther up her neck. Strangely enough, she had not heard you swear all day. Perhaps it was because you had still been getting comfortable with her, or perhaps it was because you had been trying to maintain somewhat of a ‘professional’ environment. But now that you were sitting down to such a casual meal together, you were dropping foul words so carelessly, and hearing them flow so freely from your adorable mouth was doing something to Abby that she had never experienced before. She wanted to dunk her head in a bucket of ice water just to make this heat stop. 

Abby cleared her throat hard, trying to gather enough salvia on her tongue to speak. 

“It’s fine.” She told you. She would not let you know of the effect you’d had on her. It was an anomaly that she would let pass and never think of again. “You can say whatever you want, it’s fine. It’s not you, I just need a drink.” 

You took this completely at face value, overjoyed that you had not made some kind of mistake, but still feeling a sourness hanging low in your belly as if you had done something wrong. It was a hard feeling to shake off. You did your best to try, thinking back to your previous line of information as Abby chugged down a healthy mouthful of the powder made juice from her canteen. 

You tried not to be distracted by the way her neck flexed as the liquid flowed down her throat or the delicious dribble of red that dripped off the side of her mouth that you wanted to lick up with your tongue. You hated that her beauty made such mundane activities so sexual. You wondered if you were really that much of a pervert or if your crush on her had really grown so strong in such little time. 

“So, um…” You shook yourself back to reality, looking down in your lap to distract yourself from the sight of the gorgeous woman in front of you. “Figs have this feminine connotation because they have a feminine appearance. And I think it has to do with etymology, too? I think I read somewhere that the Greek word for fig also means vulva, and the Italian word for fig also means… pussy.” You were slightly hesitant to say it again, almost whispering the word this time. 

More than anything, Abby was impressed by your intelligence. Hearing you use all these words so comfortably in conversation, listening to you spout knowledge off without even thinking about it too much. Abby, of course, was not lacking in knowledge herself. Her head was full of medical facts, plenty of information about guns and their different types, even the topography of Seattle and how to best navigate the crumbling city because she had lived here for so long. 

But she had never really taken the time to read up on topics that weren’t going to be relevant to her life. Topics that would be nestled into her mind just for the sake of knowledge, for the sake of having a deeper understanding of the simplistic everyday things around her. You looked at a fig and saw pages of knowledge in many books you had read. Abby looked at a fig and… didn’t think much about it at all. Seeing your mind in action was something she marveled in. Something she wanted to spend more time around. 

Her simply looking at you with fond eyes and not saying a word put your brain under pressure to conjure more things to say. 

“You know actually, it became common practice for women who wanted to court other women to bring their lover a basket of figs, before same sex relationships were accepted in society, as like, a stealthy symbol of their lady love.” You were particularly excited about this piece of knowledge, and Abby was beginning to sweat. 

She had no idea why this topic made her so squeamish. It’s not like she took issue with same sex relationships. She would have no problem if any of her friends decided to start dating someone of the same gender. It would be incredibly strange for Manny, given his enthusiastic history with women of all appearances, abilities, and intelligence levels, but anyone else she wouldn’t bat an eye at. Gay people were fine in her book. Great even - seeing as she wasn’t that fond of screaming babies and generally, gay people meant there would be a lot less of them. 

So why the fuck did you bringing this up make her want to run away and spend the next six hours at the gym to try and forget all her strange, gut twisting feelings about it? 

“And it’s not just figs,” You remembered easily. “A lot of fruits are associated with the female form, and have been taken on by lesbain writers to symbolize lesbain love specifically because of their feminine connotation,” 

Abby gave you a fake smile, hoping you would tire of the topic soon so that you could move on from the conversation. She felt that it would seem like far too much of a red flag if she tried to change the topic artificially. 

Of course, she had not been around you long enough to know that once you got started on something, it was damn near impossible to stop you until you ran out of material. And even then, once you ran out of actual facts to state, you could go on for hours about your opinionated perspective on those facts, and how this material related to others in ways you found interesting. You were like a nonstop documentary channel on just about anything once you got started. 

“Like pomegranates!” You were very excited when this came to mind. “It’s actually believed by some theologists that the tree in the Garden of Eden was a pomegranate tree and not an apple tree, which I find interesting mostly because it’s majorly debatable if the Garden of Eden was real at all, and yet there’s some people debating what the fucking trees were,” You laughed, getting slightly off topic. “Anyway! It’s believed that it was a pomegranate tree, not an apple tree, like most people know, and that the fruit Eve actually ate when she committed the original sin was a pomegranate and not an apple. But because so many came to associate the pomegranate with the female genitalia, a lot of people refuted pomegranate tree theory based on the grounds that it would make Eve’s original sin… lesbianism.” You find this hilarious, and take a pause to stress the point. 

Abby was most definitely not religious. Her father had never been, she was never raised around religion. It’s not like she took issue with women who dated women because of any sort of religious stance. It was not a sin. At least not in her eyes. If she did believe in sin, she’d be a lot more worried about where she’d end up based on her treatment of others rather than who she slept with.

Not that she had ever slept with women before. And not that she did take any real issue with women who did. Fuck. 

“It’s actually really interesting, because in poetry, pomegranate seeds actually came to be a euphemism for the clitoris,” You said this word very casually, still speaking with academic excitement. 

Abby wanted to laugh. She didn’t think Owen even knew what a clitoris was, let alone that he would have the knowledge to cite poetic symbols for one. She found herself leaning in to listen, feeling both a slight itch of discomfort under her skin and a dull heat between her thighs that she wanted so badly to fucking go away.

“Because of the small, red - actually…” You suddenly remembered something, and spun around in your seat, moving awkwardly with your stiffness from having sat on the floor for a while now. “I have a pretty good example in here.” 

Abby was more than interested to see the book of 101 Erotic Poems in your hands, you flicking through to find whatever example it is that you had thought of. Abby was curious, but almost afraid, in a sense. Something ‘erotic’ was meant to be a turn on, wasn’t it? Were you attempting to educate her, or… no. You didn’t have any strange motivations. You were a very straightforward person. 

Your eyes landed on the title and you smiled to yourself. ‘Basket of Figs’ by Ellen Bass. Although this was an effort to communicate your knowledge and share some of your ‘fun facts’ with your new friend, you would be lying to yourself if you tried to say that you had completely innocent intentions. You felt too socially inept to simply ask her if she felt inclined toward women at all. And besides, that felt rude. But you did feel confident that reading this aloud to her and gauging her reaction would give you some sense of her proclivities, and whether your crush was completely hopeless or not. (The fact that she was completely out of your league and you were socially awkward, emotionally overwhelming and many considered you to be a burden, that was a bag of shit too heavy to weigh out that you would consider at another time entirely.) 

You cleared your throat quietly, and began to read. 

“Bring me your pain, love.” It was a powerful opening line, spoken in the soft uncertainty of your voice.

It made Abby wonder for a moment what pain had to do with the throes of passion, but then she supposed, inviting someone to share their pain with you and being unafraid of the consequences was one of the most intimate things a person could do. Her mind sharply reminded her that no one would ever want her pain; a weight too great to bear for someone as undesirable as her, someone as insignificant. 

Owen had never loved her like that. He had never been willing to. 

Maybe… maybe only a woman was capable of giving that kind of love so easily. Maybe that’s why a woman would write about it. Maybe that’s what Abby needed, what Abby wanted. A woman’s love.

No. 

“Spread it out like fine rugs, silk sashes,” Your words grew more confident, more pronounced in the otherwise silent room. 

It’s not liked Abby hated women. Just because she had a male roommate and spent most of her time hanging out with other guys, most definitely did not mean she hated other women. She was different from them, of course, she always had been. 

“Warm eggs, cinnamon, and cloves in burlap sacks.” 

You kept your eyes on the page, afraid to look up at Abby just yet. Afraid to know if you were right or wrong. Perhaps this wasn’t even a good test at all. Perhaps she would enjoy the poem perfectly fine but had never looked at a woman the way you had, and never would. 

In a lot of ways, Abby had come to admire the women around her. Women like Leah, and Nora, and sometimes even snooty Mel. 

She admired them like you’re supposed to admire your friends. For their internal traits, and their external. She never considered herself jealous of them. No. Not in the way that she’d want to trade her hard earned muscle for their soft curves and well kept hair, she just… admired them for those things. 

“Show me the detail, the intricate embroidery on the collar,” 

She thought it was natural to look at the women around you and recognize them for their beauty. Of course, not just for their beauty, not like the mindless wet shirted bimbos in the movies that Owen and Manny liked to watch. Though, from time to time, Abby could see the appeal of those movies as well, because somehow it was always a single wet shirted bimbo that survived. 

“Tiny shell buttons,”

It’s not like Abby had ever thought about any woman… sexually. No. It was normal for her to cast her eyes down the shirt of a friend if they were sporting a healthy amount of cleavage. Breasts were a distraction to any human being with eyes. It was normal. 

“The hem stitched the way you were taught,”

It was normal to accidentally let slip the name of your female best friend when your boyfriend was inside you and too wrapped up in his own pleasure to notice. Sex is an emotionally confusing experience, and thoughts can creep in by mistake.

It didn’t matter because Owen didn’t notice. 

“Pricking just a thread, almost invisible.” 

Invisible. Abby wished she could be invisible right now. 

You dared to glance up at Abby over the page of your book and saw that she was stiff; body filled with concrete from head to toe, a bright redness having flushed over her neck that was starting to creep up onto her cheeks. Her eyes were drowning with thought and you wondered for a moment if she was even able to take in the words you were reading at all, or if her mind was caught up somewhere else. 

“Unclasp it like jewels, the gold still hot from your body.”

It wasn’t real because she’d only cum thinking of Nora by accident.

“Empty your basket of figs.” 

Even if she was touching herself. 

“Spill your wine.”

Even if it was more than once. 

It was not real. 

“That hard nugget of pain,” 

Abby’s internal panic was almost intensified by the pause you took, not realizing that this pause was due to the next words of the poem being the most overtly sexual in nature, and your hesitancy to say them for fear of her reaction. You looked up, your gaze flickering to hers in one ultimately dangerous moment - and with the crisp knowledge and seeking you held in your eyes, burrowing into her in this most tender moment: she had been caught. 

She rubbed her palms on her thighs nervously, licking her lips, sweat gathering at the back of her neck. The collapse she felt inside her at that moment, the great break of a wall inside her somewhere shook her to the core. She wanted to scream out, to protest against this nakedness, against this unwilling vulnerability to another human being that she absolutely had not signed up for. 

But instead of allowing her to cower away, you used this barely budging gap in her facade, and burrowed your way inside. You opened your lips, and kept reading - using your velvet voice to crawl under her skin. 

“I would suck it,” You announced proudly, the sexual words treated so purposefully by your now wicked tongue. You barely even took a moment to look down at the page, staring Abby down, taking delight in watching the hue of her skin turn deeper. “Cradling it on my tongue like the slick seed of pomegranate.”

She wanted to run. She wanted to hit you. Even though that would be cruel, and you didn’t deserve it. 

She just wanted to do anything to take back some control of this spiraling situation. 

“I would lift it tenderly,” You almost whispered these words, the gentle vibration of your voice causing a chill to run up Abby’s spine. You were watching her so carefully now, it was not something you missed. A victory you quietly relished in. “As a great animal might carry a small one in the private cave of the mouth.” 

Abby had no idea that you were finished until you shut the book, not really hearing any great finality in those last words of the poem, but she was glad that this literary based torture was over for now. 

She wanted badly to say something to you. But of course, speaking would mean acknowledging this terrible happening out loud. So the two of you muddled in the silence for a few moments as you stared at Abby and Abby stared very decidedly at one of the half eaten fig tarts on the makeshift box dinner table, cursing the fruit for starting the whole fucking dicussion. 

Just as you had decided upon the perfect thing to say to her, having very little idea about the nature of her inner turmoil, you were both distracted by the sound of heavy footsteps in the hallway. Isaac appeared in the darkness of the open doorway, his grey hair, stern face, and commanding presence unmistakable, even through the cover of darkness. 

Abby silently thanked him for his appearance, thanked the God she didn’t believe in that there was some distraction from the tension that had befallen the two of you. 

You were quick to put your book down and get to your feet, eager to make it seem like you were actively working, or at least hadn’t taken too long of a break. 

“Abby.” Isaac said her name more as a noting of her presence, rather than a greeting. “I’m surprised you’re still here. I thought you would have been done by now,” 

Abby stood up as well, feeling slightly awkward sitting on the ground when speaking to someone she did consider to be her superior. 

“I stayed to help as much as possible.” Abby informed him, believing he wouldn’t have a problem, as his judgement did usually align with hers. “Putting heavy boxes where needed. Help with lifting some of the bigger volumes. Putting books on high shelves. Assist Y/N as much as possible,” 

Isaac looked between you and Abby, and then around the dimly lit room. You knew he was inspecting the progress you had made on the project, which was impressive for the minimal hours you had done it in, but you almost felt as though he was sensing the tension between the two of you and about to ban you from ever being together again because of… shenanigans. It was a ridiculous thought to have, but it crossed your mind. Isaac had always made you gut twistingly nervous, as all authority figures did. 

“Has she been helpful to you?” Isaac asked, turning to you now. His tone was even, absolutely unreadable. You fucking hated it.

“Oh yes, absolutely.” You assured him. 

He took another glance around the library, and even in the absolutely minimal lighting, you saw the slightest shift on his face that resembled a grin, and a nod toward something positive. He was pleased with the work you had done. 

“I am afraid I will have to take her away from you,” It was perhaps the closest thing to a joke in Isaac’s book, and it made your stomach drop. 

You knew he was talking in completely temporary terms, that obviously he had some other important job for Abby to attend to. But you had been enjoying your time with her so much that just the idea of her being ‘taken away’ from you made your sensitive soul quiver. 

He turned to Abby to give her his next instruction. “I’m gonna need you over at Six tomorrow. They finally found a generator that’s big enough to power the elevator and I don’t want them fucking it up before it even gets here. I want that goddamn elevator fixed tomorrow. No later.” 

Abby thought distantly about how it would have been nice for the elevator to be fixed today - but then perhaps she might not have had an excuse to spend all day with you. 

“Of course.” Abby took the order easily, nodding to communicate her understanding. 

“Go home and get some rest. There’s a truck leaving in a few minutes with some people coming off rotation. I’ll make sure they wait for you,” Isaac patted Abby on the shoulder, making this her signal to be on her way. 

She crossed the room to where she had placed her backpack, busying herself with it, almost hoping that Isaac would leave so she could say goodbye to you in private. She was completely unsure why - she hated the tension that being alone with you brought. But she felt this odd sort of connection with you and it seemed rude to leave without saying goodbye. To blow you off, in a sense. 

Isaac turned to you next. 

“Do I need to send someone else up here to do the heavy lifting?” He was genuinely concerned - more so about the project getting finished properly without anyone being injured than your personal needs. But it was nice, all the same. 

“No.” You answered honestly. “It’s pretty much all done. The books just need to finish being shelved and organized, and then I’ll start on the map when it gets light out.” 

“Excellent.” He complimented. You felt a great sense of relief when he turned away from you, no longer feeling the pressure of his intensity directed at you. “Don’t be long.” He instructed Abby as he left, disappearing back into the dark hallway once again. 

“What map?” Abby wondered out loud, turning to you as she slipped her backpack straps over her shoulders. 

You had no idea she had been listening to the conversation, and took a moment to answer her question. 

“Oh. Uh, Isaac wants like a mural of WLF territory,” You motioned to a wall across the room that had been purposefully framed by the shelves, and now that you mentioned it, it did look oddly blank to Abby. “I guess he wants it to give patrolling assignments? Or… something…” You weren’t entirely sure why, but you were pleased that he valued your artistic talents for something, and found you useful. “I did a couple of the Wolves at the Stadium. The big ones.” 

Abby found herself surprised. She walked past those almost every single day, and not once stopped to think about the talent behind them. How had she never met you before? How did she never know who you were? Your lives so closely entwined yet… so far apart. 

“They’re gorgeous.” Abby complimented easily. “You’re really talented. I guess I never really thought about who did them before. I never knew it would be someone as great as you,” 

Abby had no idea why these compliments were flowing so freely from her, but the sweet words melted your insides like a hot knife through butter. You had to turn away and pick up your book off the ground to busy yourself, to give yourself some kind of distraction from the fatal feeling that was crashing through you. 

“Thank you.” You accepted her compliments in a small voice. “I’m just glad I’m useful for something. Even if it is just painting big wolves on walls and shelving books.” You noted; Abby could hear that trace of something in your voice - regret, sadness, maybe a longing for something more. 

Sadly she didn’t have the time to pick that apart right now. 

“Are you gonna catch a ride with me? Or are you gonna find somewhere to sleep here?” Abby couldn’t really imagine sleeping in this haunted building. She hadn’t heard the screams of prisoners at all today - but wherever Isaac had moved them to, their souls and the souls of those who had come before them still stuck inside the walls like a thick smoke that strangled her if she wasn’t careful. Being here with you was the most pleasant experience she’d ever had in this hellscape of a building. 

“I probably won’t sleep.” You told her honestly. “Between the physical pain, and all the stuff that’s always racing through my mind… I don’t know if I really mentioned this, but having autism, it’s like… noise. Constant noise in your head. All the time. And yeah, between that and the pain, it keeps me awake.” Abby had a stern look on her face, displeased by your statement. She was unhappy to know that someone who worked as hard as you did, someone who already had a preexisting health condition was not getting good quality rest. You smiled at her, trying to defeat her frown with your own manufactured positivity. “I prefer to just work through the night. Rather than tossing and turning in bed and getting frustrated when I can’t sleep. I realized a long time ago it’s better to work tired than be wide awake and just stare at the ceiling,” 

From the few nights she had spent awake reading, or times she had felt desperate enough to go to the gym and work off her nervous energy when she couldn’t sleep, Abby could understand where you were coming from. 

“Okay. I guess I’ll just… go then.” She was hesitant to leave, not knowing when she would see you again, not knowing why the hell she wanted to when you made her feel so many awful and confusing things. 

She turned and made steady, confident steps toward the door, almost through the pitchy curtain of the doorframe when you said something that made her stop dead in her tracks. 

“Goodnight, Abigail.” 

Your voice was entirely steady and certain, tossing this farewell out to her with the most confidence she had heard from you all day. 

She hadn’t heard anyone use her full name in years. Likely not since her father used it to scold her or since Owen and Nora threw it around in mocking, but long since stopped when she had gotten big enough to be intimidating in their eyes. To say something with finality and have it actually get through their thick skulls. 

She was surprised that she liked the way it sounded coming from you. Not at all like a mockery or a scold, like a true and beautiful label for someone much more beautiful than her. It almost sounded intimate - hearing you speak the name she never let anyone else use for her. Like you were inviting yourself to another part of her that you seemed to know about before she did. Her stomach clenched with that fear once again, and she immediately wanted to take this from you.

While not turning around, strangely enough, not feeling courageous enough to face you, Abby conjured her voice to correct you. 

“It’s - it’s Abby.” It was a pathetic stutter, punctuating the amount of fear she felt in the wake of your overwhelming boldness. 

“It’s a beautiful name. I wouldn’t replace it with some stupid nickname.” You told her, mirroring her words from earlier that day, absolutely refusing to back down from what you had done. 

Normally you would have immediately flexed to the social queue of someone telling you their preferred name, but for some reason you could tell that Abby was correcting you not as a hard locked preference, but as a defense of the inner self that you had discovered. The one she had still yet to acknowledge. The one who saw figs as a sinful fruit, rather than well.. Shit. 

You prayed that you were right - that all the signals you had picked up on were not just your own fabrication, and as she was leaving, she gave you one more that made you almost entirely certain. 

As she was going out the door, she took one last glance over her shoulder at you, and the look on her face told you everything you needed to know. A battling desire that you could barely describe - her eyes lingered on you for just a moment too long before she disappeared into the hallway. Maybe you were a bit too confident, but she would be thinking about you. 

You had stirred something inside her. That much you were certain of. Something inside her that she didn’t know was there, something that she was terrified of. 

But you couldn’t bring yourself to feel bad about it. The look on her face - she was too curious. She was scared, terrified of you, terrified of herself. Terrified of what all this meant. 

But she would be back.


	2. The Private Cave Of The Mouth

Abby, even having been given strict instructions to rest, and not often being one to go against orders, spent a good three hours at the gym when she got back. Visions of you and echoes of your words were buzzing inside her head, and she didn’t find herself entirely rid of the ghost of you until she was baking under the spray of a hot shower with nothing else to think about but the scalding of her skin and the impending sleep she couldn’t wait to get to. 

She slept like a rock that night, the weight of both the day’s physical and emotional trials having put her into a deep, thankfully dreamless sleep.

She woke to the sound of banging on their apartment door, way too early, and had to cover herself with an itchy throw blanket over her shoulders like a cape before answering, staring at Whitney with barely one eye open as the smaller girl explained that they were leaving for Six soon and Abby was supposed to be on the truck. 

The job at Six was no less than a shitshow. 

They had found the necessary generator, yes, but Isaac had so generously forgotten to state that it was sequestered away in a basement that had no fucking freight elevator to lug the three hundred pound thing up with. The TV Station had two of them as some kind of power backup for most of their major equipment, and to Abby’s best understanding, they had either been put down there with cranes before the floor was built or been brought down there piece by piece and assembled. 

And seeing as nobody on her team was a fucking engineer, she found herself spending her morning directing them to bash out what was left of the rotting floor and rigging a pulley system up to a hydraulic wench on one of the trucks in order to just get the thing above ground. In the pouring fucking rain. Screaming her lungs out at a bunch of people who had never used the equipment before and had no idea what they were doing. 

Of course Isaac had stressed how badly he wanted the elevator fixed. Of course it would be Abby’s ass if the entire operation was fucked up. Because she was ‘his favourite’. Because he had put her in charge. 

By the time the generator was on the truck on its way to the FOB, the rain had dried up (along with Abby’s patience) and the sun was high in the sky blazing down on them. Abby would have complained about the heat if she wasn’t so thankful for the way it dried her clothes off, and the fact that she was not one of the people tasked with actually hooking up this stupid fucking metal nausance to the elevator. Her job was done. She was out of Isaac’s potential path of rage for now. 

As soon as they pulled into the FOB, Abby’s eyes went to the Apartments like a magnet, and she happened to catch a glimpse of you through one of the open windows on the top floor. Her heart jumped, and she felt so distracted by the swelling of feelings that Whitney had to tap her on the shoulder to remind her to get out of the truck.

She helped unload the obnoxiously oversized piece of equipment to make sure they didn’t damage it, you floating in the back of her mind the entire time, and helped with the colossal double forklift struggle to get it up onto the roof. And once it was safely up there, she decided it was for sure no longer her problem and took her smooth exit via the stairwell, finding herself stopping off on your floor. 

Oddly enough, you had taken away some of the haunting quality from this building. At least from this floor. Abby could hear you singing through the wall, your voice quieted through the layers of plaster and books, but hearing you so happy, carrying such an upbeat tune made her smile to herself in an idiot way that she probably would have smacked herself for if she could see it in a mirror. 

She reached the door, surprised to find it closed. The smell of paint reached her nose, and for a moment she imagined you walking around with those earplugs in your nose again. The smile on her face broadened. She wondered why you would have the windows open to vent the smell and not the door - most likely Isaac and his paranoia. More people passing through today to fix the elevator and him having some mandate that you have it closed. 

Abby found herself leaning her forehead on the cool wood of the door, your singing reaching her ears more properly now, the paint smell leaving a dull ache on the inside of her nose. 

She was cursed with the utmost urge to see you, but the utter ability not to go inside. 

Maybe she had imagined it, what had happened the previous night. Maybe it had been a great hallucination brought on by being tired and overworked with too little food that day. But Abby was not entirely sure she wanted to find out. 

Maybe she should go back to Owen. He had always been so easy. So much less confusing than this. He was with Mel now, but Abby knew if she beckoned him, he would break up with Mel at a moment’s notice. 

She pressed her head harder into the door, causing an even pain to spread from where her flesh made contact with the wood. She tried hard to remember what it had been like kissing him. Fucking him. If it had come anywhere close to the dangerous thrill she felt when you were sitting a foot away from her, reading dirty words from your stupid book. 

Abby growled hard, trying to release all the frustration from her lungs all at once. She pushed off the door and kicked one of the empty boxes in the hallway on her way out, causing it to fly up and hit the ceiling with a dull thud.

… 

You stayed at the FOB for a few days longer. 

Abby knew this for sure because when she went back to Base, she went by the library after her workout, and kept doing so every single day, feeling a cloud of disappointment loom over her every single time she saw the sign that read ‘Librarian is out, please slide returns under the door or hold them until further notice’. 

She hated that she smiled the first time she’d seen the sign simply because it was written in pink glitter pen, and had a few more of those same stickers that were on your notebooks. 

She hated that you had such an effect on her. 

She hated that now, even when she was lifting, showering, eating, playing flip cup with Manny and Jordan, all she could think about was you. She hated that checking the library to see if you had gotten back was the first damn thing on her mind every single morning when she woke now. She hated that she couldn’t even look at a fucking fig tart anymore without feeling heat creep up the back of her neck. 

On her next full day off, she woke up early (only because she couldn’t sleep) and indulged in a long, hot shower. And when she was dressed, of course, went straight to the library to check if you were back. She was actually surprised to find the door open, and the lights on. This meaning that you were indeed lurking somewhere around. 

Abby stood in the doorway, and felt an awful twist in her stomach. 

She felt that same terrible curse once again - as though the doorway was a great wall that she just could not pass through. 

“Fuck.” She mumbled under her breath before she turned around to leave. 

… 

That night, Abby laid awake in bed. 

She couldn’t stop thinking about you. The way your lips had wrapped around those words, the look in your eyes when you had been reading to her. They had been someone else’s words, but every ounce of your own emotion. That’s what burned the most - your emotions digging under her skin, and Abby trying to convince herself that it wasn’t real because they were just someone else’s words. 

It wasn’t real. You didn’t mean it.

Abby heaved a rough sigh in frustration to herself and rolled over in bed, trying to get comfortable enough to go to sleep. Manny snored deeply across the room and she was glad that her petty emotional angst wasn’t disturbing him. 

Staring at the wall, eyes still so wide open, still so fucking awake, Abby couldn’t ignore that feeling. That nagging in the pit of her stomach, that screaming at the front of her mind that just wouldn’t shut up about you. 

She shucked the covers off with the all force of her sleepless frustrations and sat up at the edge of her bed, the cool air of the room nipping at her skin and causing unpleasant goosebumps to rise up across her arms and back. 

She had to find out. She had to know. 

At the very least, she had to walk off this nervous energy, take a cold shower, something.

She slipped a large, loose tee shirt over her bare form and pulled her khaki pants up over her bare thighs and simple cotton boxers, doing up the fly and button. She slipped on her socks and boots, not wanting to walk the cool floors of the halls without shoes on. She ran her hands over her hair; many strays had escaped her braid with the chaos of her tossing and turning, but she couldn’t be bothered to fix it. She probably looked an absolute mess, but she couldn’t hide that. No matter how much time she spent putting herself together - she knew she couldn’t hide from you. 

Before she could blink, she found herself outside the library, staring down the cool metal of those double doors. There was a single light on, as she could see the dim glow leaking out into the dimness of the hallway from underneath. She knew this meant you were awake. Though it was shameful, she found herself thankful for your insomnia. Few others would be awake and chasing productivity at this hour. 

Anxiety grew like a dreadful sickness in her stomach as she took that last step toward the door, and took a hold on the handle. It was absolute now. She was going to do this. 

She absolutely fucking hated that when it came to fighting Scars or facing down men who outweighed her and outgunned her, her heart was always full and fierce. But when it came to stupid shit like climbing to the top of a Ferris Wheel or spending time alone with a girl, she felt small, like as much of a coward as she had ever been. 

“Don’t be stupid, Abby.” She resigned to herself, gripping the handle hard. “She’s just a girl, you don’t even like her. Well, not like… that.” 

Then why are you even here? A voice in the back of her head screamed at her. 

She absolutely did not have time to dive into the complexities of that question, and did not have the room for the swell of defeat she would feel if she walked away from this fucking door again. So she twisted the handle, and walked inside. 

You had a desk lamp sitting on a tall stool in the center of the room; the open part of the library that was arranged to invite people to cozy up with a book and enjoy their time reading. Not that most people at the WLF had time to just sit around and read. The most Abby had ever seen this area used for was carpet storytime for the classes of younger kids and occasionally people coming in on their days off; though most people did prefer to relax in the comfort of their apartments with their loved ones. 

So it was very clear that this had become your domain, your palace of literature. Books were scattered everywhere in different piles, some of the furniture even moved from the last time Abby had glanced in here, and Abby guessed that you were in the process of completely reorganizing things the way you liked them to be, officially staking your takeover as the librarian. 

Surely you had heard her come in - it was impossible not to in the silence of the night, impossible not to feel the presence of another person in the room - but you didn’t look up from what you were doing, didn’t acknowledge her yet. Perhaps it was a kind of punishment because she had waited so long to come and see you. You were making her wait as well, even if just for a long suffering moment. 

She took this moment to observe you. 

An empty shelf cleared off behind you and a large pile of books in front of you, you seemed to be making some kind of catalogue with the notebook in your hand. Slow and tedious, picking up each book, examining it, and then placing it on the shelf before writing down a few things and then starting this process over again. Judging each one in your mind, Abby could almost see the thoughts flying across your face; which ones you liked, which ones perplexed you, which ones you felt neutral about. 

It was thrilling to see you in your natural habitat. 

With your long sleeved, striped shirt, that was somehow just tight enough to be flattering; a dark bra strap peeking up just beside your neck where the fraying edge of the shirt had gone crooked. Your loose drawstring cotton shorts that left scarily little to the imagination when you turned around, perhaps pulled up more in the back or perhaps just lacking fabric in comparison to your ample bottom. Abby found herself wondering if the fabric was too thick to see the line of your underwear through or if you simply weren’t wearing any at all, and almost wished she could erase thoughts created by her own mind. The entire ensemble topped off by a pair of adorable, well worn in fuzzy slippers that had bunny ears and black, beady bunny eyes, with a pair of striped socks inside them. 

She had no idea how you could look so sinful and so adorable at the time. But she guessed that was just your unique charm. Being that deadly perfect mixture of both. 

Abby cleared her throat, trying to shake herself from her own strange thoughts. 

“You gonna say hello to me, or you just gonna keep working like I’m not even here?” She complained, trying to sound more sour than shaken by your presence and the overwhelming effect it had on her. 

You smiled, letting out a breathy chuckle that escaped through your nose rather than your lips. “You could have said hello to me first, Abigail.” 

There it was again. The pointed use of her full name that drove her insane, but not because she needed you to stop, because it sounded so damn right coming from you. Like you were allowed to use it but she had never given you permission. She wanted badly to correct you, but the words got stuck in her throat. The name was yours to use now. It sounded real. It sounded right. 

Instead, she bit her lip and put her hands on her hips, unsure of what to say. You still refused to look up at her, eyes focused on something in your notebook, scribbling down a correction to something you had previously written. For some reason, this lack of attention made Abby aggravated with you. She had come here to see you. She had finally broken down. That was supposed to mean something to you. 

She growled low in her throat, nearing the level of pitching a childish fit. At least for someone as composed as Abby normally was. 

“What seems to be troubling you this evening, Abigail?” 

Your voice was even, calm, still not taking a look up at her as you asked this question. 

Rather than answering, not ready to unwrap the full disgustingly complex nature of her most honest thoughts, she decided to nitpick at the nature of what you’d said. 

She glanced up at the round faced clock that was hanging high on the wall behind you. 

“It’s three in the morning.” She corrected you quietly. 

You turned to look at the clock yourself, almost as if you doubted her statement. 

“Huh.” You said, surprise filling your voice. You had been working since before dark, and the passage of time always surprised you. You had never been a good judge of time dilation. Something you attributed to your autism and how easily you could become absorbed into tasks. “Well then what seems to be troubling you at this early morning hour?” 

You let out a soft breath, something that perhaps could have birthed a laugh if the tone hanging around Abby wasn’t so entirely serious. You didn’t want her to believe that you were laughing at her, but you did find your own ‘joke’ to be entertaining. Even if the scowl on her face told you that she did not. 

Abby almost couldn’t stand how cheerful you were, how distracted. As though you didn’t care for a single moment about all the searing tension that was coming off her in waves. Could you really not sense it? 

“You know exactly what’s troubling me,” Her tone was laced with just enough sass to communicate her agitation, but not enough to make it seem as though she was entirely angry with you. 

Ultimately, she wasn’t. That’s one of the things that made her even more agitated. Her inability to take any of these emotions to full throttle. Just sitting in a disgusting soup of them, mixed together, all half formed and pouring out from places she didn’t even know she had. 

Abby crossed her arms over her chest, defensive, trying not to let a single one of her half cocked emotions show through. She looked you up and down, looking for any crack in your calm, almost fucking pleased self that she could use against you. 

You took a careful pause before you spoke your next words. “What if I don’t?”

There was a confidence in your voice that made Abby sure you were playing with her, rather than plain ignorant. You were baiting her, trying to get her to say it. She didn’t want to say the words. She didn’t even know exactly what she was supposed to say. 

Your eyes were filled with a heated kind of mischief that made her want to scream. 

You knew exactly what was troubling her. Despite having no reason to believe so, you knew she would come back. You had terrible instincts when it came to sarcasm, tone of voice, reading people’s intentions and emotions. But if there was one thing you could sniff out from a mile away - it was a lesbian. 

Abby growled in her throat again, quieter this time, and you quirked an eyebrow at her, the slightest smirk coming across your mouth. She was staring you down, and as much as the eye contact made you tremble inside, you would not lose this battle. If you were right, you would win the game by making her say it. If you were wrong, you absolutely would not make yourself look like a moron by speaking your assumptions aloud. 

“You.” Abby growled out, trying to make her ‘anger’ toward you seem far more bitter than it actually was. Though it seemed nothing having to do with you could truly be bitter tasting. You were naturally sweet. Like figs. Like everything Abby never thought she deserved. 

“Me?” That almost laughter was on your breath again, the singular word not as accusatory towards her as it should have been. Your features were full of hope and waiting, and Abby knew she needed to produce more words in explanation. 

“You!” She affirmed, confident in this statement by now. Of course it was you. It was all you. This entire thing was all your fault. She had not been having any of these thoughts or any of this confusion until you came along. “You, and your stupid…” Abby hesitated, taking a sharp breath in through her teeth. Fear gripped every part of her soul, but just as she did when she had stood on the edge of the Ferris Wheel seat, about to jump off - she would not let fear get the best of her. “Your stupid lesbian poetry." 

Your eyes glinted. She hated that fucking smug look of knowing, that hungry satisfaction that danced across your features now. Part of her wanted to wrap her hand around your throat or yank on your hair to steal that satisfaction from you. And then she hated you just a little bit more. Because she knew those thoughts were not coming from their normal place in her mind - not coming from a place of true violence. Not a mindset that wanted to see you truly suffer. But a mindset that wanted to conquer you and take your power. Because in digging under her skin and finding out her secret before she had even truly realized it herself - you had taken hers. 

She’d never want to hurt you. Not ever. You were beautiful and delicate and Abby wished so badly to preserve those things in this fucked up world. Even if that meant never laying a hand on you; walking away and never talking to you again. But she wanted so badly to drive you as insane as you were currently driving her. 

She growled lightly under her breath, the thoughts racking her insides like a sea of broken glass, and turned away from you. She couldn’t face this. She couldn’t process this. She didn’t have the words. 

She found a seat in one of the large, plush armchairs in the middle of the room, sitting with her knees wide, butt on the edge of the seat, back sloped as she leaned on her elbows and put her head in her hands - trying to think. 

You walked over to her, putting your notebook down along the way.

You knew the war she had going on inside her, as you had hard fought the same one yourself years ago. It had almost been easier for you, knowing that you were already a freak, and that your parents and the people around you couldn’t possibly hate you anymore than they already did. Knowing that most couldn’t look past your cane, your selective mutism and endless infodumping when you did speak, so throwing kissing girls on top of the pile wouldn’t make you any more or less likable, you had decided one day. 

It was a lot harder for her, you could tell. But you would try your best to help her. She was worthy of love. Of loving herself. Of your love. And you hoped so badly in your heart that she would actually want it. 

You stared her down, knowing she could feel your pertinent gaze on her. 

You couldn’t help but admire her golden hair in the light, the wild strands flying free from her braid, the hard broadness of her shoulders, how strong and tense each muscle looked through the thin cotton of her tee shirt. You wanted so badly to reach out and touch those muscles - alleviate some of the tension that had built up like poison inside her body. 

"Bring me your pain, love." 

Your voice was quiet, repeating the words from earlier, now memorized, living like an imprint of your feelings for her inside your brain. 

She tensed up even more at the sound of those familiar words coming from your lips again - the ones you had tortured her with oh so carelessly. 

Before you could even think about the consequences, you reached out and touched her. Your cool fingertips oh so light across the hard plane of her shoulders. She flinched at the contact. And if you had not been feeling so wickedly brave because of her admission, however small, you would have pulled away. 

"Spread it out like fine rugs, silk sashes," 

Abby let out a fleeting breath, closing her eyes in disbelief of you, feeling the tingle of your touch as you pursued her more - spreading your palm flat against her covered flesh, rubbing ever so gently and slowly against her stony posture. 

It was the gentlest she had ever been handled by another human being. She dared herself not to cry at the purity of your touch. 

"Warm eggs, cinnamon, and cloves in burlap sacks." 

The words were still pouring from your lips like the patient drip of honey off a spoon, and she couldn’t be mad at them anymore. They were chosen for her. Nothing in this world was brand new anymore - she could only be thankful that you had taken such care to hand pick these words for her. That you had dug so deep and actually felt something for her. 

"Show me the detail, the intricate embroidery on the collar," 

You eased her out of the touch, taking your hand off her very carefully so that you could walk around to stand in front of her. Her eyes still closed, feeling your presence heavy in front of her, she was terrified for the moment she would have to look at you. That would be the moment this would all become real. She didn’t think she would be able to deny it any longer once you looked into her soul again and saw that she too, had actually come to believe the earth shattering discovery that you had made about her. 

"Tiny shell buttons, the hem stitched the way you were taught," 

You made an incredibly bold move then. 

You knelt down in front of her, fighting a bitter war with the ache in your knees and somehow not caring when they creaked like old floorboards, so close to her that the cool skin of your arms brushed against the insides of her covered thighs, just barely. 

When you were settled, your face was mere inches away from hers. The position put a mild ache in your legs, the bare skin of your knees pressing uncomfortably into the carpet, likely going to leave marks with your overly sensitive nature; the position aggravating your already bad back, but those things couldn’t matter to you at the moment. All you could think about was Abby. The stress and emotion that battled on her face, the way her eyes were forcefully shut, a tight wall to keep from seeing you. 

You needed to break that wall down. You needed her to know that you saw her. And that just how deeply you saw her was not a bad thing. 

"Pricking just a thread, almost invisible." 

She was not invisible to you. Her internal warring was not invisible to you. 

You were close enough now that your hot breath was reaching her face as you continued to speak lowly, and she absolutely had to resist the urge to look at you. She knew she wouldn’t be able to handle the consequences of it. And there would be consequences. 

"Unclasp it like jewels, the gold still hot from your body." 

You could feel the heat coming off her, sitting between her legs like this. Maybe she was feeling the exact same way you were - or maybe she just ran hot. People who had as much muscle as her always did. 

But you had a feeling that your presence had to be having some kind of effect on her. You hoped your presence had as much of an effect on her as hers did on you. 

Emboldened by the false confidence you gave yourself, and feeling the burning want to find out if she truly did feel the same way about you, you pressed on. You raised both your hands at once, bringing that tender, unjudging touch to her lonely flesh once again. Your palms found a home on her hard thighs, and she let out a stiff breath at the way you burned her. It had to be impossible for your skin to be this hot against her, even though fabric. It had to be impossible for the temperature of your touch to have changed this much in just a few short moments. 

She had no idea how much your blood was boiling just from being this close to her. Just from tendering the line between being accepted into her lovely arms and being thrown away by someone as perfect as her. 

"Empty your basket of figs. Spill your wine." 

You had no idea how you managed to keep your voice so steady, pitched up by the mask of confidence you wore so well. 

You put some weight on your hands, leaning up onto your aching knees and angling into her, being careful to crowd into the orbit of her space but not touch your face against hers. Not yet. 

She opened her eyes, finally, the intensity of your breath on her cheeks shaking away the last bit of sense and self control she might have had left. 

Your eyes were fire on hers. It burned her insides, stung. If you weren’t so damn determined, you would have broken away from her steel gaze, but you were trying to decipher the pain inside her eyes. Was it the imprint left behind by the carelessness of another lover? Or was it that she truly did not look upon you as a woman, did not want to share this closeness with you in the same way that you did with her? Was it disgust? Or was it hesitancy to finally make that jump into the fear of the beloved unknown? 

She eased back, taking the weight of her frame off her elbows, leaning back into the plush hold of the large chair. She was not relaxed, not by far. But she had nowhere else to go in her pursuit of some control of the situation, some grip on reality. 

You made her forget everything that was real. You made her feel as though the time she had spent with Owen was all a play, all some act to get she herself to believe that she could have loved him. You made her doubt everything she had ever believed about herself. You made her want to drown in fantasies that were a sweet rippling tide of orange and honeysuckle. 

"That hard nugget of pain, I would suck it.” You announced this to her with a hard burning conviction. You watched with intention as her chest laboured with cautious breaths. If she was breaking down inside, a weak willed victim to your unique seductions - she would not let you know it. Not yet. 

You gripped her thighs harder, digging your nails into her ungiving flesh ever so slightly. You wondered if she felt it through her thick pants. You leaned in closer to her, still unable to close the gap she had created in her attempt at an escape. You had put more weight on your hands and felt a weakness in your wrists, and silently prayed that they would not choose now to collapse on you. 

You would let her run from this - if she wanted to. But you got the feeling that she absolutely did not want to.

And you were right. 

“Cradling it on my tongue like the slick seed of pomegranate." 

You said those words of the poem, feeling Abby’s heat pouring into the air still, mixing with your own, and something luxuriously evil popped into your head. 

You leaned forward, pressing your hot cheek into Abby’s, hearing the smallest gasp escape her lips at the feeling of your soft skin making contact with hers. Your body so close to hers now that her burning center was just barely grazing your stomach. 

"Would you let me cradle your slick pomegranate seed on my tongue, Abigail?” You whispered, your words nestling right into the shell of her ear. 

She shivered, and she knew you felt it. 

She knew what it meant. She knew what you meant. And perhaps the dirtiest thing about it all was that this had been the softest way she had ever received a dirty invitation before. There was something all too thrilling about the implication of your words rather than you outright saying what you meant. 

Your hands crept up further on her thighs, threatening closer to her heated, pulsating center and Abby had a hard time not moaning out like a whore. There was no denying that she wanted this, that she wanted you. She was far too heated now to be drowning in complicated thoughts, but she refused to embarrass herself by moaning like one of the sluts in the cheesy porn DVDs that she and Manny laughed at, she refused to sink to that level. Absolutely refused. 

“Would you bring me your pain?” You whispered, recontextualizing the earlier words of the poem. She would. Absolutely. But it’s not something you’d want. You wouldn’t want the walls of pain she had inside her. The rivers that ran deep with her pain, the nights that drowned her in it, making her restless and thin. You wouldn’t want her. 

What she had no idea of is that her pain matched your own. Not in a way that she would be able to see clearly at first, but in a way that made it true all the same. You spoke vastly different stories, but sported all the same marks. And where her pain had filled those marks with concrete, made her stiff and strong against the world, your pain had made you softer somehow. With each insult and sneer and each time someone told you they did not want you, it planted a flower inside you. A garden you had watered for years, fields of kindness that you had been saving up to give to someone. 

In that moment, Abby was too high and too hot and the slash of this harsh reality through her - that you would not ever want her at all - cut at her insides so suddenly that she could not stop the tear that escaped her eye, even with all her sacred willpower.

You felt it on your cheek, hot and wet, and pulled away a mere gap to get a good look at her. Her eyes were glassy ponds, cheeks flushed, beautiful pink lips formed into a hard frown. 

You pressed your forehead to hers, closing your eyes, initiating a gentle closeness; trying to do something to let her know it was okay while your brain formulated words. Of course, there were no words for this. That was the tragedy of being human. Being trapped inside of a body and forced to feel and having to be taught words that were supposed to adequately describe experiences from one person to another, when truly, words meant nothing a lot of the time. 

With you no longer watching her, Abby leaned into your small touch and closed her own eyes, accidentally squeezing more tears from her soaked lids. In the pain at being so vulnerable, she released a small, quiet sob from the back of her throat - all that she would allow you to hear. 

It was enough of a wound to cut through your heart, enough to make you bleed for her. You raised a hand up from her thigh, leaving yourself completely unstable, balancing a lot of your weight on only one weak wrist, but chased the need to comfort her more than you felt the need to care. Collapsing and falling into her would not be the worst fate that had ever befallen you. That hand found a home on her soft, tear streaked cheek, and she sucked in hard through her teeth. Your touch was so incredibly loving, so incredibly soft. Perhaps you actually had some capacity to love her - and letting herself believe that for even a moment terrified her all over again. 

“Abigail.” Flicking through the endless dictionary in your mind, you came up pitifully short. Every cliche seeming overused, every fancy nuance seeming far too lavish to have any footing in this intensely emotional situation. Repeating this, the angelic title everyone else refused to crown her with, seemed to be the only assurance you could give her. Assurance that this was not a mistake. That you had saved all those flowers for her. 

“Don’t.” She declared, voice so much weaker than her usual authority, reaching up to pull your hand away from her cheek. 

You refused to let her. Keeping your touch as gentle as possible against her heated skin, you kept your arm stiff, absolutely planted against her fingers as she weakly tried to pry it off her face. She did not put up much of a fight, especially considering how strong she was. She gave into you, flattening her hand over your own, and you opened your eyes then - pulling back just a bit to take a look at her, eyes still clamped shut, tired, emotionally ravaged, more tears rolling down her face. 

You swept your thumb across her cheek, collecting the wetness of these tears on the pad of your thumb, and that was the singular action that broke down the very last wall Abby had put up inside of her. She was hot, and messy, and your touch was so gracefully soft against her that it caused everything racing through her mind to fade into white noise. Her blood was now pulsating through her body at too high a speed for her to even think. 

She wanted you. 

That much she knew and absolutely could not deny. She wanted you so selfishly now that she did not care if she touched you and you fell to pieces. Almost did not care if she tainted you with her poisoned soul and she would live to regret this one careless moment. You were too good, and she was horrifyingly not, and she wanted to fucking ruin you. 

And she could no longer care about holding herself back from that. 

“Kiss me.” Her voice was restricted by all the emotions that were bogging down her throat, but her words were unmistakable. 

Finally having absolute confirmation of her desire for you, you ran wild. 

Using your hold on her cheek, you pulled her into you, immediately declaring your dominance by forcing her toward you. The moment your lips touched, it was a clash of burning heat that was everything you had been dreaming of since the moment you had first seen her inside the gym across from the library. You simply held her there for a moment, taking in the purity of her pillowy pink lips, her dreamy softness, the tingling heat that radiated out from where her mouth met yours. She pulled away after a moment, barely a gap, just enough to suck in a small breath against your bottom lip before she dove in for more - much more intensely this time. 

It was so foreign to Abby, a feminine mouth on her own. No stubble scratching against her cheeks, no harsh musk in her nose. Just pure inviting softness, yet so blazing hot, a sensation so tantalizingly strange that she couldn’t help but embrace it. She perched a hand on the back of your neck, urgent to pull you closer, rubbing a thumb gently over the spot where your jaw met your ear, causing you to moan into her mouth as you snaked your tongue through her barely parted lips. 

A small gasp left her own mouth at all the stimulation, the sound you made so brand new and thrilling that it caused a hard pain between her thighs. You absolutely delighted in knowing that you were doing something to her; hearing the smallest noises coming from her, feeling the heat coming off her body in waves now. Knowing that you had done this to her and you were in control now. 

You teased her tongue with yours, just barely, and gave her a few more intense, full mouthed kisses as your breath mingled together on your cheeks before you pulled away. She missed your mouth almost immediately. She wanted to know more of you. She wanted to hold you tight in her arms and breathe you in. 

You could not mingle with her lips for as long as you wanted to, though they were smooth and precious to you, your knees and your wrist were aching and more so, your tongue was aching to explore the rest of her body. 

You couldn’t help yourself and laid a few gentle pecks across her neck on your way down, earning a small whine from her when you laid your lips on her pulse point. You would most definitely remember this for next time (hoping there would be a next time) but you didn’t linger here for long, having other devilish plans brewing in your filthy mind. 

You adjusted your body, shifting your knees to make them feel more stable underneath you, already feeling the irritation the carpet had set into your skin, putting more weight on them and leaning into the cushion of the chair between her parted thighs for support, taking all your weight off your now entirely throbbing wrist. You locked your gaze with Abby’s blown out eyes for a moment as your hands found the hem of her shirt. You searched her face for any sign of discomfort, any reason that this would not be okay, and found only burning desire shining back at you. 

You took a grip on the fabric, lifting it away from her body with certainty, but found it trapped between the cushy chair and the wall of her muscle that was keeping it there. 

“Take it off.” Your tone was struck with demanding authority, and you had no idea where it had come from, but you loved it. And you loved even more, the way Abby reacted to it. 

She did not hesitate to follow the simple instruction, leaning forward and taking her shirt off by the collar, tossing it to the floor somewhere before she had too much time to think about it. She shivered when the cool air of the room hit her skin, placing her arms onto the arms of the chair as she settled back into the seat, going against almost every instinct she was feeling that told her to cover herself from your focused eyes. Without a bra under that shirt, which she was almost regretful of now, she was completely bare to you - exposed from the waist up. She tried her hardest not to falter under your attention, feeling that fear creep up on her again. 

The first time Owen had laid eyes upon her like this, it had been very dark, and she had pumped herself with confidence on the basis that he was lucky to have any woman in that kind of position underneath him, because he could be such an asshole sometimes, and knowing that she could have crushed his windpipe with her thumb if he insulted her body in any way. 

But this was so very different. The light from the lamp was bright enough to bathe her, to cast beautifully defining shadows across the hard lines of her shoulders and biceps, and soft crests from the pillowy curves of her breasts and peaked nipples. And as your gaze burrowed over every inch of her, so brand new to her form, a pair of eyes she could not simply pluck out of their owner’s head if they found the sight of her to be underwhelming - Abby felt more vulnerable than she ever had. 

But the only thoughts racing through your tainted mind were positive ones. Well, positive in a very sex crazed way. 

Abigail Anderson was the picture of pure perfection - golden hair catching the glow cast off by the lamp, cheeks entirely flushed, a gorgeous redness that trickled down her neck and even onto her chest in patches, broad shoulders tense with anticipation, lips slightly parted. 

And of course you would be nothing if you did not mention her beautiful, supple breasts - small, much of their natural fat having been worked away by her impressive exercise routines, but most definitely a mark of feminine beauty that reminded you of why you fell in love with women in the first place. Roundness jutting off from her body in a way that made you want to nuzzle your face there, and you bit your lip because you would likely actually be allowed to pursue that dream. With a beautiful sprinkling of golden freckles across them, and two of the prettiest, pert pink nipples you had ever seen, you couldn’t help but express what you were thinking. 

“You’re so fucking gorgeous.” You let out all in one breath, absolutely in awe of her. There was a flicker in her eyes, when you were finally able to tear your own away from her breasts and meet them, a flash of something that said she almost couldn’t believe you. “I mean, Abigail.” You declared this with as much finality as you could muster when your blood was mostly pooling in your pussy and your thoughts were still very much stuck on burying your face in the softness of her tits. 

“Thank you.” She said, very quietly, still sounding entirely uncertain of herself, and you decided the best way forward was to show her your conviction through action.

Show her just how fucking beautiful you thought she was through worship. 

You placed your hands on her waist, lighting her skin up with the contact of your burning palms on her bare torso. She let out a gasp at this, the feeling unexpected, but welcome. You leaned in without hesitation, resting your chin onto her breast and beginning a parade of sloppy kisses across the skin. Feeling your hot mouth on her, so eager, Abby instinctually arched up into the touch, her hand moving to cradle the back of your head. Your mouth quickly made it to her nipple, taking no time to tease her and simply latching onto it, sucking it hard between your lips as your hand smoothed up her body to grope her breast from underneath. 

Abby moaned out, surprising even herself with the noise, pushing her breast harder into your warm mouth and using her hand to push your head in tighter toward her body. 

Owen had never been this good with her. Never this careful with her body - so often used her breasts like his own personal playthings, toying with them so roughly, as if they had no nerve endings at all. And she often had to slap his hands away and threaten him with the punishment of never being able to touch them again. 

Abby had no idea she could feel like this just from having a mouth on her breast. She had no idea she could feel like this period. 

You bit and sucked with careful teeth at the skin around her nipple as you groped at her breast, all too much enjoying the feeling of the soft, pillowy flesh in your hand. Her sounds were heaven in your ears; a litany of small gasps and rising moans that let you know what you were doing was more than pleasing to her. 

You were almost upset when you had to pull away from this sacred appendage, letting your fingers roll over the now spit soaked nipple to tweak and squeeze it between your knuckles as you laid a trail of kisses to the middle of her chest and downward, toward the waistband of her pants. You had not been false in your intentions to taste her. Abby let out a sharp, high pitched moan - perhaps surprised, perhaps thrilled as your intentions were made absolutely clear to her - when you grabbed the button of her pants between your teeth and yanked on it, toying with her. 

But with the burning ache rising in your back, some of the muscles beginning to spasm, screaming at you, the punishment for twisting yourself to get your mouth on her at this awkward angle, your body begged you to readjust before you could properly claim your prize. 

You took your hand off her breast before you left a sloppy peck on her ribcage. A promise that you were not done with her, a promise that you would give her everything she wanted, everything she needed. 

You sat back on your aching calves, relieving some of the burn in the tight and strained muscles, straightening your back with a small crack. Your hungry eyes couldn’t help but take a long, admiring gaze over Abby once more. She was a beautiful mess. Some strands of hair loose and flying, some stuck to her forehead with sweat, her lips bee stung from the intensity of your kissing. Her breast still glistening with your spit, heaving gently with the effort of her breaths, nipples stuck off proudly in the balmy air your heated encounter had created. 

You would capture this version of her in your head forever, and hold it so fucking precious. Everyone else only got to see the composed, strong, leading soldier Wolf. You, and you alone got to see this heated little lady who was slowly falling apart under your fingertips. And you wouldn’t be satisfied until she was absolutely in pieces - and even if this never happened again, you would get to live the rest of your life knowing that you, the weakling, had conquered Abby Anderson. 

You put your finger on the button of her pants, finding her eyes through the smaug that had gathered in the room, pausing for a moment, giving her the time to back down if she wanted to. She held your gaze, eyes more heated than ever, more wanting than ever, lips heaving with small breaths - not saying anything. 

She would not beg unless you needed it. But she sure as hell would not say no. 

You popped the button and undid the fly, slowly, taking care with each action, holding contact with her eyes the entire time. She helped you once again, raising her hips, feeling entirely too naked and exposed the moment her pants and boxers were around her ankles. And for good measure, and to have something to do to ignore the feeling of the cool air eating away at the severe wetness between her thighs, she kicked off her boots and tried not to giggle as you helped get the offending garments off her ankles. 

She was absolutely naked now. Perhaps she thought she knew what that meant before, but this was being utterly and truly naked in front of another human being. You had started stripping her down from the moment you met her, peeling away at her sense of self, at every little wall she had built up over the years. You found a wrinkle in her carefully finished wallpaper and peeled at it, and since that moment, Abby had been on her knees for you, wondering if you could teach her what the inside of her own soul even looked like. 

And now she was ready. She was absolutely ready to find it - her soul, her safety, her stability. And she knew she would only find it in the cave of your mouth. 

She tried not to flinch when you placed a hand on her right thigh and hoisted her leg over the round arm of the chair. You had seen her doing yoga before (definitely just a glance as you were walking by, not a full on stop to take a perverted eyeful of her bending and twisting her body in those delightful ways) and you knew she was more than comfortable in this position. It was even more exposing, but she swallowed any doubts she had in favour of the burning that was growing even hotter inside her. 

She held her breath as you looked at her. Really looked at her. Your eyes dined on her as though you had never seen another woman before; and you had never seen one this beautiful. Her creamy thighs spread out for you, soft skin draped over pure muscle, nestled between them a small patch of golden blonde hair that couldn’t hide the divine dessert that was her soft, supple, pink pussy. Absolutely soaked, the wetness glowing like a beacon in the low light, waiting for you. 

“Please." 

Perhaps Abby was not above begging. Perhaps your unfaltering stare and your not touching was becoming too fucking much. Her insides were starting to squirm; knowing that you desired her but you somehow had the patience to sit on your knees and fucking wait. To take in the sght of her like the previews on a fucking VHS instead of fastfowarding to the feature presentation. 

You shot her a wicked grin that almost made her fear whatever would happen next. But it was the good kind of fear that also made her want to open her eyes to these moments and chase the adrenaline endlessly. 

You could not deny her any longer.

You leaned in carefully, brushing your lips just barely against the skin of her raised right thigh. This new contact made her muscles jump, which only served to widen your devilish smile against her skin. You looked up at her, patient, and began planting kisses along that skin, with wet, puckered lips, leaving behind a trail of cooling saliva. She let out a small moan, from deep in her chest, muscles twitching under your mouth at the electricity you were creating. She had no fucking clue that she could become so hopelessly turned on, so hopelessly close from so little contact. She was absolutely dripping, making an embarrassing mess of the chair beneath her as her pussy clenched around nothing, just from feeling your lips teasing her. 

She wasn’t sure if this fact made her want to bury her head in the sand forever, to never look at you again, or turned her on even more and made her want to praise you as the sex goddess you clearly were. 

When your breath fanned over her soaked pussy, Abby moaned out weakly. 

Owen had never gone down on her before. Their relationship had been pretty maladjusted, even for the fucked up people that they both were. They talked a lot, they talked often. But it was the kind of talking that didn’t involve communication. Usually not a shred of it during the hours and hours that they spent together. If they ever did attempt to delve into talking about their issues, it would end in a screaming match that would usually end in a sparring match that would either end in one of them getting seriously injured and not talking to the other for days, or end in sex. And Abby had never found herself brave enough to ask for the oral pleasure that he always lacked the idea to give her on his own. 

The moment that you spread her swollen folds with two expert fingers and touched her clit with your hot tongue, any thoughts of her ex boyfriend that were floating in her mind dissolved into nothingness. 

"Fuck!” Abby’s voice echoed out into the room, her neck craning as her head snapped back, eyes squeezing shut almost instantly. 

She absolutely could not describe the intensity of what she was feeling, having never felt anything like it before. Your tongue was intense on her swollen clit, rolling and pressing the sweet pomegranate seed against your greedy taste buds as your fingers spread her wide to make room for the movement of your hungry tongue. 

Abby was burning up, the entirety of her existence forgotten except for the place where she was connected with you, sloppy and wet, hot, entirely dependent on the next tiny stroke of the tirelessly working muscle you were ruining her with. If she still had some connection to her ears, she would have thought herself pathetic, hearing all the moans and high pitched whines that were being pumped out by her lungs - barely filled by the next gasp of air before you drove another one from her with the tiniest flick of your work. Any shame, any thought of being compared to a fraudulent porn actress was entirely gone now - this was too real to be faked for a male audience, this was too hot to be stopped by internalized misogyny. 

Maybe it was because you had been winding her up since the moment she had walked through that door, since the moment you had first read that poem out loud to her. Or maybe it was because you were truly intent to drive her off the deep end, and not selfishly partaking in this experience for your own pleasure - but this was fucking earth shattering. 

You sucked hard on her clit, drinking the taste of her, and Abby lost control of her body. She could not keep her leg where you had put it - instead finding her muscles spasming, seeking out your touch, both her knees bending harshly, foot that was still planted on the floor lifting up completely, her thighs clasping around your head. You almost felt smothered by this, having nothing but pure muscle around your head, her pussy now smothering your face, the beautiful musk of her juices now drowning you. But you leaned into the touch, smoothing your hands onto her gorgeously toned ass from underneath and eventually finding them a home on her hips, finding this to be the best form of sensory overload you had ever experienced. 

You sucked harder on her clit, feeling brave enough to nibble on it, bite on it lightly, feeling the resulting wave of juices that gushed onto your chin. She bucked toward you, rubbing her pussy sloppily across your face, causing you to growl deep in your throat at the action. Knowing how fucking unhinged you were able to make her was making your head float. She whimpered at the vibrations this drove through her clit, and you laved your tongue over the bead harder, digging your fingernails into the skin of her hips, lapping up her taste and absolutely lavishing in the moans that continually poured from her lips. 

“Fuck! Please!" 

She begged so fucking pretty, and you knew exactly what she was begging for. 

But you wanted her to cum by the will of your tongue alone. 

And by the pitch of her moans, the desperation of air to get into her lungs - she would. 

You dug your fingers even harder into her, stopping her squirming hips against your face surprisingly well for the measure of her strength against yours. Just another show of how much you had defeated her, how much you had truly taken her down. You would not allow her to escape this - not by an inch. 

You placed your swollen, overworked lips over her soaked mound whole, sucking at her juices like you would suckle at a delicious, ripe peach in the summertime - devouring her with more hunger than you ever had with anything in your entire life, willing her moans to become louder and louder so that you could hear them through the wall of muscle she had put up around your ears. You stroked your tongue back and forth in hard, practiced motions, bouncing her swollen clit on the muscle with no relent. You loved the way she pulsed underneath you, the way you could feel each electric shock flow through her, more intensely, as her orgasm came to a head. 

You pulled away for a fraction of a moment, the intense grip that her thighs had on your head and neck giving you barely any space to do so. 

Abby whined out sourly at the denial of her hard earned orgasm. 

"Say my name.” You demanded. She would acknowledge you. She would pray to you like the God you were. The woman who had come along and unraveled the heterosexual image of herself that she had held together with barely a thread all these years - that thread you had found and unraveled it with a single stroke of your tongue. “Say it, Abigail." 

"Y/N.” She was chanting this prayer before you even had the chance to return your mouth to her, having grown so ultimately weak to you that she would do whatever you asked of her in this moment. “Y/N!” It was much higher pitched, needy and distressed with pleasure the moment you wrapped your lips around her clit again, sucking shamelessly. “Y/N! Oh fuck, Y/N!”

You felt the spasms of her orgasm echo through your tongue first. The hot pulsations of her clit, the small organ practically vibrating as she fell apart beneath you. Her back bent as if pulled tight by a string, and her thighs clamped, and you were forced to move your hands from her hips to the inside of her legs for slight fear that she would forget her strength in the heat of the moment and you would possibly be crushed by the sheer might of her. A wonderful way to die; smothered by her skin, with the taste of her lingering on your tongue. 

But you were not done with her yet. Not by far. 

You worked her the whole way through it, keeping your tongue nuzzling at her tired clit until her legs were shaking with spasms and she was whining with overstimulation. 

Digging your fingers into the supple skin of her inner thighs, almost wondering if you would leave marks and letting out a greedy moan against her simply at that thought - which caused her to cry out pathetically, you felt a new wave of determination splashing at your insides. You would show her a better night than any man had ever shown her, than any man would ever be able to. She would be marked by you. 

You continued rubbing your tongue over her clit, slowing your pace and pressure slightly to give her some room to recover from her orgasm. But it seemed she had never experienced this much stimulation before - absolutely ruined by you. She was a squirming mess, hands trying desperately to find purchase anywhere on the too smooth fabric of the chair or on the back of your head, muscles unsure if she wanted to drive you more toward her aching cunt or pull you away in order to get a breath from this exhausting experience. Her hips wiggled, somewhat trying to escape and somewhat trying to get closer, especially when your tongue hit just the right spot below the hood. But you held her in place, now entirely much stronger against her orgasm tired form, even with your naturally weaker arms. 

“Fuck, Y/N, I came…” Her throat was raw, her voice coming out in a low gravel. You found it adorable that she felt the need to inform you of this, almost as if you would not know. As if your lack of knowing would be the only reason for you to continue pleasuring her. “You can… you can stop…” 

You lifted your mouth from her, adjusting your knees, which were long screaming at you in pain (you chose to ignore this for the screams of Abby instead), and looked at her face, trying to find any true signs of discomfort. She was tired, her jaw slack, entire body sloped in the chair far more than she had been before, looking down at you with her chin perched on her flushed breast. 

“Do you want me to stop?” You could not sense any genuine dread or unpleasantness coming off her, but felt the need to ask just in case. Her enthusiastic, continued consent was your utmost priority. 

Abby swallowed hard, her entire mouth and throat made of sandpaper, so dry from being held open to the air with no relief. She managed to gather enough saliva inside her mouth to speak her reply.

“No.” Of course she didn’t want you to stop. You were so fucking good; your mouth was so hot, you knew every inch of her body better than she knew herself. She had just been waiting for the inevitability - the burst of this heavenly bubble. “It’s so good. You’re so good. But I thought-”

You would not allow her to finish this thought, seeing the foolish insecurity of it coming a mile away. 

“Why would I stop when you taste so fucking good?” 

Your words went straight to her core, causing a weak whimper to bubble up in her throat before you dove back in once again. Her body shook, muscles seizing with the sheer electricity when you sucked on her clit once more, almost too breathless to produce the calibre of sounds needed to measure up to the sheer stature of pleasure you were giving her. She knew it was because she had never even come close to being like this with Owen, enjoying herself this much, but her mind was so far blown that she wondered if she just may die from this - wondered if you would kill her with your tongue and she would never be seen by another again. 

When you moved one of your hands from her thigh and placed your fingertip at her soaked entrance, just barely prodding inside, she realized she did not care. This would be a most perfect way to die in a world of tragedy and darkness. 

“Y/N,” 

She couldn’t help but say your name now, her mind so focused on you, your touch, the way your existence completely enveloped her, completely in charge of everything she was now. 

You rocked your tongue over her clit again, demanding shockwaves from the bundle of nerves to compliment the sharp finger that you drove inside her, suddenly, all at once. She gasped out at this, hips seizing completely off the chair for a moment, having to be driven back down with a commanding shove of the hand you still had on her other thigh. She gripped your finger like a ring of fire, so fucking tight, and you immediately began spearing it into her, stimulating all the nerves that you could feel eagerly responding to your touch. 

“More!” Abby begged. “Please!” 

Continuing to thrash your tongue against her delicate pomegranate seed, you couldn’t help but give in to her begging this time and pulled out your finger to quickly replace it with three, feeling more merciless as the moments went on. You eased these fingers in much more carefully this time, feeling her gripping you like a vice, but giving, opening up to your touch. 

“Fuck!” Her voice cracked with this one simple syllable, showing just how fucked out she was. 

Her hips strained to get closer to your touch, but you kept your fingers completely still and your mouth lapping at her a mile a minute, this juxtaposition absolutely shredding her to pieces. When you felt she’d had enough time to adjust, you pumped your fingers once, twice, unbearably slow, and she let out a howling scream that echoed off the walls as her second orgasm exploded inside her. 

“Y/N!” She cried out, tears streaking down her face, for an entirely different reason this time. 

The muscles in her legs absolutely quivered as you continued your motions with a sharp will, sucking up every last bit of the taste of her that you could, pumping your fingers into her with a slow, even pace until you felt her hips flexing away from you in an instinctual escape of absolute overstimulation. 

You pulled away completely satisfied, the air of the room hitting your hot, Abby slicked cheeks as a cold shock against the skin, licking the taste of her off your lips.

“Oh my God.” She breathed out, clearly trying to ground herself. 

You giggled, wiping off your chin and cheeks with your palm. She peered down at you, even more of a mess than she had originally come to you that night, a beautiful vision of sticky hair, positively as red as you had ever seen her, skin glowing with sweat in the most angelic way a human being could ever be. 

Though she looked completely spent, the energy completely drained from her visibly sagging limbs. And she was quite obviously satisfied from the glowing expression on her face and the empty, fucked out look in her eyes, you couldn’t help but want to take this just a little bit further. Abby was a tough girl and you were curious just how far you could push her before she genuinely asked you to stop. 

“You act like you’ve never had an orgasm before,” You grinned at her, voice light and airy for words that were so absolutely foul. 

It’s not like you were right. Because you were absolutely not. Abby was well experienced with orgasms - she was more than versed in the ways of self pleasure, even if she was completely self taught. 

You teased your hand back between her legs, gently ghosting your fingers over her well abused clit, continuing to stimulate her. Partially for fun, and partially because you hoped the electricity of your stimulation would invite some truth from her during your incoming questioning. 

“Oh my God.” Was all she managed to get out, really unable to respond to your statement all that much. Her eyes drifted shut once more, almost in disbelief of you. Her body was tired, but it still felt so fucking good, woke her pussy up, contrasting the area between her legs with vibracy compared to the concrete that filled her limbs. She was so used to falling asleep after being fucked or fucking herself - she wondered distantly where you got this energy from, this hunger, and felt a thrill go through her at the impossible challenge of satisfying you. 

“You used to date that Owen guy, didn’t you?” You couldn’t resist the urge to bring him up. It was obvious she had never been satisfied like this before, and you were just too curious if this was the imprint left behind by a truly selfish straight man. 

You were playing with her now, enjoying a most lovely game as you danced your fingertips along her clit. Your motions were still gentle, applying barely enough pressure to stimulate her, but enough to make her breath pick up, especially with how much she had already been played with tonight. 

“Please don’t bring him up right now,” She was quick to respond this time, releasing all these words in one breath, instantly confirming your memory of the pairing to be true, simply on the fact that she did not refute the statement. She wouldn’t have been so bothered by you bringing him up, except for the fact that she did not want any images of Owen flashing through her mind while your fingers were touching her like this. 

The part of you that was trained and polite wanted to listen to her, wanted to simply kiss her and fuck her with your fingers to another fantastic orgasm before you brought her to your bed for a good, long nap. But you weren’t feeling so polite. You were feeling powerful - having put in the careful time to take her apart like this, unravel her piece by piece, and you felt entitled to push her boundaries - just a little. 

“Could he make you cum?" 

Your words were chosen carefully, even through the haze of your hot mind, your fingers simply slipping between her folds now, playing with the pool of her overwhelming wetness. 

Abby refused to answer that. 

She swallowed thickly, wanting to beg for more but terrified of what it might do to her. What you might ask of her, and what her orgasm weakened brain might just admit in return. She bit her lip, trying to keep her words trapped inside her lungs. 

"How long were you guys together? A year? Longer?” You were purely fishing now, having absolutely no idea of the true answer. For all you knew, they could have been together for a few short weeks that meant absolutely nothing to the both of them, or they could have been going steady and strong up until last month. But you didn’t believe they had been an item as of recently, seeing as Abby spent much more time around her roommate, who was very clearly a platonic force in her life. (And no, you were not a stalker. You were a casual observer of the things that unfolded around you.) 

You pressed two fingers inside her, her pussy now much more pliant to you, and began moving them agonizingly slow as you waited for her answer. 

“I guess.” She breathed out, hoping that her cooperation would lead to you giving her more. 

You were intrigued by the noncommittal answer. Had the relationship been not even important enough to her for her to keep calendar days of how long they’d been together, even if it had been more than a year? 

Either way, you decided not to press for specifics at this moment, and sped up your fingers as a reward, flicking your thumb over her clit. She moaned lowly, opening her eyes to look at you, wondering how you were still going and even surprised with herself when she felt another orgasm building in her belly. She found herself liking this sudden switch to slow, gentle. But with how used up her body was, the slightest of touch was that all too overwhelming thing that made her tremble. 

And you loved the way that trembling felt under your hand. 

“That’s a long time getting fucked by an untalented cock without cumming at all," 

You continued to pick your words cleverly, delivering them with confidence. That confidence driven home when you felt Abby squeeze your fingers, leaking just a little extra bit of wetness out around your already soaking knuckles. You swirled your thumb around her clit, avoiding putting just the perfect amount of pressure on it, moving your fingers just a bit faster now. You knew she loved the spite you held in your voice - the spite for her having to go so long without pleasure. Because that was the true feeling you held in your heart. Someone as perfect as her should be fucked properly, even if it wasn’t by you. 

And you were going to more than makeup for it. 

“I should just keep fucking you.” You declared, your mind absolutely gone to that place. A place where Abby was laid out for you, naked, possibly tied up, not allowed to leave until she’d had every orgasm she had missed. She would be messy and eventually stupid from the endorphins, and you would fucking love having so much control over her. You were drunk off the control you had over her now. “Give you a whole year’s worth of orgasms. Make sure I don’t stop until you can’t even walk. Absolutely fucked out, shaking.” 

She was pretty much there now, and you fucked your fingers even harder, grazing your thumb under the hood and holding it there, just to absolutely ensure you would finish the job. 

“You need to be better than him?” Abby gasped out, barely enough air in her lungs to properly form the words. She couldn’t hold this thought back - a wonderance of why you seemed to be so obsessed with Owen. Though she would be lying if she said that it didn’t absolutely turn her on; your need to be better, your need to stake your claim over her, to own her body by bringing her so much more pleasure than he ever could. 

You did not hesitate with your answer. 

“I already am.” 

You pressed your thumb down harder, pushing your fingers all the way in and curling them upwards, finding that one magical spot. You pressed hard into that spongy flesh, making her scream out at this new feeling and squeeze hard around your fingers as she came for the third time that night. You rubbed her insides gently the whole way through, using your other hand to soothingly pet her sweat damp thigh, eventually smoothing your hand up to land on her ribcage as you pulled your fingers out, unable to resist licking them off. 

You were the very definition of the cat who had just gotten the cream, and that cream tasted like Abigail Anderson’s natural tangy musk as you licked it from between your fingers. 

"Don’t be so smug.” She scolded you, far too breathless still for her words to have any bite to them. 

You giggled again at the sheer irony; at how you, someone likely perceived as weak, had made the strongest woman at the WLF fall apart, had made her weak to you forever with just the right flick of your tongue. 

Of course, what you never could have known was that it was so much more than just your tongue, no matter how skilled it may be, that made Abby fall victim to you. It was your sweetness, the way you looked at her, the way you got under her skin. The way you seemed to look past all her muscle and might and see her for what she truly was - weak. And as much as that terrified her, it delighted her all the same. To actually be seen by someone for the first time in her life. 

She wanted badly to see you too. 

Even if she would have to work a little harder to do so. Considering her inexperience with women, and generally just with trying to be good to people. But you were more than worth working for. 

“C'mere.” She said quietly, patting the naked expanse of her thick thigh, imploring you to find a seat there. 

If you hadn’t been listening well enough, and if the library hadn’t been so deadly silent, you wouldn’t have heard the invitation. Especially not with all the noise of your affection for her filling up the space between your ears. But you didn’t take the time to second guess if it was real. To wonder if she was actually leaning into this thing going on between you two, and definitely not having post orgasmic regret like you would have originally feared. You simply shook away any negative thoughts that could have popped up, and did as she asked. 

You rose up on painful knees, hearing a sharp crack as your joints shifted back into place, but not having time to stretch or readjust yourself before Abby reached out and pulled you right into her lap. 

You released a puff of hot breath into her face, almost surprised by her, almost burned by her arms as they encircled around your waist, pulling you tight against the skin of her hot torso. The fabric of your shirt stuck to her skin with her sweat, showing you just how much you had affected her entire body and all its systems. 

Abby felt somehow even more bare now, having you sitting on top of her while fully clothed, but she tried her best to ignore that fact, and press on with confidence instead of the unsteady weakness of someone who had been stripped of all their clothes and thoroughly fucked. 

With a dull ache still thrumming between her legs, she leaned in and kissed at your neck, more than enjoying the way the soft skin felt under her lips and the way your gentle gasp delighted her ears. She felt as though she was the one with power for once that night, causing you to make a noise like that. It gave her a burst of energy she didn’t know she was capable of after three orgasms, and she wanted more. She sucked on that spot, earning a small, high pitched moan from your lips. 

When your hands found her shoulders, sitting there as if they were home, she thought she may just die. 

“What about you?” She murmured into your neck, feeling your pulse begin to pick up against her mouth. 

It was probably the most unsexy way to phrase her proposition, especially after the grand seduction that you had given her, and she wished she was half as well versed in this as she was fighting or gun toting. Sure, she knew how to dirty talk. But it felt like you, especially you deserved a higher caliber of foreplay than just ‘shut up and fuck me’. (She hated that she was thinking about Owen again. She wanted to burn every last bit of him out of her mind. But for fuck’s sake, he was her only existing reference for this kind of thing.) 

You giggled again, all air and fun, nothing but enjoying your time in this moment, not over thinking it whatsoever. Abby envied you. You pulled away slightly from her touch to look her in the eye, now bathing lovingly in the heat that her gaze cast upon you. 

“What about me?” You wonder out loud, genuinely not understanding the intention behind her words. 

She knew words would be lost on you in this moment, especially because any words that she fetched from her unworthy 'straight’ mind would not be good enough for you. So she decided to do the one thing she was good at - taking action. 

Her arms moved, smooth and slow, until both her hands were flat in the center of your back. And, keeping her eyes locked with yours the entire time, she ran those large hands up and down your back, her fingers making contact with all your distorted bones and malformed connective tissue through your shirt. The smooth, calm massage was somehow one of the most erotic things anyone has ever done to you. A tender, hot, all consuming touch that sent shockwaves straight to your pussy. Perhaps because she was being so entirely gentle and loving with one of the parts of you that was the most damaged, one of the parts of you that you had come to hate the most. Feeling her run her palms over the mess of pain and ugliness, using this touch to engulf you and own your entire being without saying a word - you could have cried. 

“Abigail.” Your voice was a hollow ghost of what it had been only moments ago, not a shred of the demanding lust fueled beast left to be heard. Broken glass filled your throat now, on the edge of shattering with lust and how delicately she was handling you. 

Those hands soon left your back, leaving you yearning for that touch. You felt a jolt go through your pussy when her fingers circled around your waist and just peeked into the waistband of your shorts. 

“Do you-?” Her voice was small in her throat, cut off by the insecurity of the question. She wet her lips, a sight you found near deadly, and tried again. “Do you want me?" 

She didn’t want to ask the question. Didn’t want to know the answers to the implications surrounding it. Because after all - would you really want a monster like her? This wouldn’t go any further than tonight. She would have this one taste of something pure, but she would never hold you in her grasp long enough to crush you by it. You were too good for that. 

"Yes.” Your voice came out in a whiny plea. “Fuck. Yes. Please." 

This was all she needed, she went on with a courage she didn’t know she possessed, untying the string of your shorts and then pulling them and your underwear down as much as she could in the space allowed with you sitting on her lap. She didn’t wish for you to get up, not when she was flying so high just on seeing the bit of your hip that was exposed, gorgeous stretch marks dancing across your skin, and the small tuft of hair that she could now see peeking out from above your underwear. 

Ploughing forward before fear could set in, she reached right out to touch you, her other hand settling with a grip on your bare hip, all her nervousness seeming to settle in the unnecessary tightness of that hold. Her fingers brushed right past the band of your underwear and your damp curls until she was settled in the nest of you. She let out a tiny gasp at the pure heat that poured out onto her, which was only covered by the much louder sound you made at the feeling of being touched by her for the first time. Her exploratory hand so sudden that it made you jolt into her touch.

She resisted the urge to reprimand you for not staying still, but held you tighter, and you almost delighted in the fact that there would be an Abby shaped bruise on your hip within moments of her letting go. 

Her breath was hot across your face, but her focus was somewhere on your neck, her gaze having zoned out in concentration. She wanted to do this right. God dammit, she wanted to make you cum. 

She was feeling around blind, her fingers beautifully clumsy and new and searching, everything about your pussy hot and slick and mouth watering. She was thankful she didn’t need to see to know what she needed to find. 

She almost thanked God that you were a woman, that your body echoed those similar hills of her own, because many nights of laying awake and exploring herself silently in the dark made her know that her fingers could find you by touch alone, by your reaction. 

"Oh fuck, Abby." 

She had found you. As warm and hot and round as she had expected, knocking the last syllable of her full name right from your lungs. It sent a thrill running through her, knowing you were balanced completely right on top of her fingertips.

She made another powerful motion with her fingers, scraping her fingertips across that swollen pomegranate seed, and you dug your fingernails into her shoulders, leaving a small trail of red scratch marks, sending a shockwave through her. 

"Fuck.” You whined out. 

Abby loved you like this. So empty headed, so light, so hers. She started making harsh circles, trying to find a motion that would drive you as insane as you had driven her - something that would mark you as hers forever, if only by the trace of her touch on your skin everlasting. 

You cried out, your feral noises of pleasure bouncing off the flesh of Abby’s cheek as she bit her lip, trying her hardest not to moan back at just the sight of you. When you began to rock your hips into her touch in earnest, she couldn’t help but reach her arm around your back and pull you close once again, crushing your body against the hot wall of hers, trapping her arm in between you as her fingers worked you into madness. 

“Please, Abby. Please,” You whined into her ear, desperate as ever.

Abby wasn’t even sure what you were begging for, but she was going to fucking give it to you. She leaned her head into the crevice of your neck, landing a heady bite on your sensitive skin, to which you let out a healthy bawl and continued humping her hand. And as she laved over the slightly bleeding bite and sucked on it with vigor, she delved two hot, thick fingers inside you, all at once with no warning. Your entire body curled away from hers, muscles stiff with orgasm at the simple sensation of being filled by the digits, and before she could even register that this orgasm had rocked your body, she began mercilessly pounding into you with those fingers. 

“Abby!” You called out, looking for some relief as you felt overstimulation overtaking you. “Abigail! Fuck, stop!" 

She pulled away from you as quickly as though she was burned. You whined at such an immediate feeling of emptiness; the cold because she stopped touching you altogether. You could almost guarantee that if you hadn’t been sitting on top of her, she’d be halfway across the room by now. 

"What’s wrong?” She asked in a dangerously small voice. 

“I came.” You announced with a giggle, finally able to straighten your knuckles from the death grip you had on her shoulders. You kissed her cheek, giving gentle pecks down the side of her neck, but could feel her stress tensed muscles under your lips. “You made me cum so fucking good.” You told her honestly, trying to reassure her. “I only asked you to stop because I was getting a bit overwhelmed,” You kissed back up to her face, pulling away to gauge her reaction. “Maybe we could go get in my bed-" 

"What?” Abby was suddenly very jarred by this idea. You were still glistening on her fingers, still so beautiful in her lap, but suddenly at the mention of going to bed it was too real. It was too tangible and you were too untouchable. Abby was sharp and you were someone soft and pillowy that would snag on her edges, and never forgive her for ruining you. 

“I like to cuddle.” You said with a smile. “I would hope you do too. I have big tee shirts you can wear if you want pjs,” 

You tried to make the proposition sound as inviting as possible, trying your best to warm up the stony expression on her face. 

“I have a cot in the office, just over there.” You reminded her, theorizing that her frown was due to some upset at the belief that both your apartments were far away, that you might be disturbing roommates if you attempted to sneak the other person in. Luckily, you did not have a roommate, even if you now had much smaller living quarters than most. These were the thoughts flying through your mind, falling completely ignorant to the storm Abby had brewing beneath her surface. “It’s not really much of a bed. I should be getting a more proper bed soon. And it’s not really much of a bedroom. Pretty small. But it’s enough for me. And ya know, I hope the smallness wouldn’t bother you if you… wanna stay the night…" 

You went on an extended ramble again, seeing Abby grow distant in her eyes, and before you knew it, she was picking you up and flipping you around, leaving you slumped down in the chair, stunned by the suddenness of it all. 

"I have to go.” She declared quietly, racing to put on her clothes. She whipped her shirt over her head and had her underwear and pants on faster than you ever thought a person could, urgency erupting from every one of her movements. 

“What’s wrong?” You asked, wondering if your talk of not having a proper bed to invite her to sleep on had scared her off. But you knew your assumptions had to be way off - she seemed far too startled for this all to be about a bed. You wished she simply would stop what she was doing and talk to you. 

You thought after all this, she would be comfortable with just talking to you by now. Comfortable with honesty. 

If there was one thing you hated about ‘normal’ people, it was their tendency to lean on secrets and lies because it felt easier, it kept their social structures in place. For you, honesty was everything. 

She couldn’t even look back at you, not even taking a moment to put on her shoes, just picking them up in her hands. “I just - I have to go." 

You didn’t want to let her go. Absolutely not. You wanted to trap her here and force her to talk to you about whatever was bothering her so badly. But for some reason, being dumped in that chair after all you had been through - it made you tired. It rang an echo of something you had been through a hundred times, with so many other people. Even if it was just slightly different this time. You would feel stupid fighting for her if she did not want you afterall. 

"Okay.” Your voice was barely above a whisper.

And then she was gone. 

… 

Abby was woken by the feeling of a hand gripping her ankle, and she was startled from her deep sleep with such terminal velocity that she flew into a sitting position, hitting her head on the unoccupied top bunk above her. 

“Fuck, fuck, ow,” She grumbled, hand flinging to the top of her head to try and soothe the now throbbing pain that was coming from the area.

Manny was snickering to himself from the foot of her bed, finding it all quite funny apparently. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” She couldn’t help but pose the question as she sat up on the edge of the bed, hand still rubbing the back of her head. 

She felt a dull ache between her thighs, the memory of your touch, and a frown formed on her lips. She wasn’t sure if last night had been some fatal mistake or if she would treasure it forever. Maybe both. Maybe that was the worst part about it. 

“I wasn’t trying to scare you, Abs.” Manny admitted, his words drawing her from her regretful thoughts of you. 

He could tell something was off about her a mile away. The fact that she had slept fully dressed, for one, when he had never seen her use pajamas or be desperately tired enough to sleep in her clothes for as long as they had been roommates. The redness of her eyes, the way the covers of her bed were so messy even though it looked as if she had barely slept at all. And the general aura of that she was carrying something heavier. Abby was very good at pretending that she was okay, even when she absolutely should not be. So it was strange to see her so… distraught. 

“Why are you always like this in the morning?” Abby asked with a glare as she rose up from her bunk, smoothing her hand over her head one last time and electing to ignore the pain altogether as she tried to get ready for her day. She had no idea what that day would involve - but she hoped it would take her away from the Base so she didn’t have to run into you. 

God, is that what things would be like now? Constantly avoiding each other? Having to slip from a room if the other person came in? Having to stagger her meal times around yours once she figured out what your schedule was? Would she never be able to get a fucking library book again? Would-

“What? Awake?” Manny posed with a laugh. 

He was watching Abby carefully and she knew it. He could most likely sense that there was something wrong with her. She wanted to tell him to fuck off and go mind his own business, but that would mean acknowledging that there was, indeed, something wrong with her. And she absolutely refused. 

“No. Unbearable.” She corrected him, slipping her shirt off, the one she had worn to visit you last night. She could almost smell you on it - the smell of library books and that certain kind of shampoo. She wanted to burn the shirt, to purge herself of you. But at the same time, she wanted to sheath her pillow in it and start using it as a pillow case just to hold what little piece of you she had too close. 

Manny’s eyes spotted the glaring red marks on her shoulders as she hauled a sports bra over her head. A set of passionate red lines that reeked of sex, and he couldn’t keep his mouth shut about it. After all, she had taken every opportunity possible to tease him about his conquests in the past. Especially whenever he came back with a new hickey or track marks down his back. 

“Who gave you the claw marks?” He didn’t beat around the bush with his observation, his tone of voice clearly joking. “Anyone I’d be impressed by or another dog face like Owen?” 

He was making a joke about it, but they both knew what he meant. He had been making not so subtle jokes about her infatuation towards women for years: 

‘Come on, you should just join my team, Abs.’ 

‘It’s probably just easier for you to date men because they’re scared of you.’ 

‘Hey, at least if you fucked a girl, you wouldn’t have to worry about her getting pregnant.’ 

But that’s what they had always been - jokes. Abby knew his idea of humor was strange, more enjoyable to be around than Owen’s insulting, poorly veiled pieces of truth that he threw around so carelessly. But that’s what Abby had never realized. Manny’s ‘jokes’ were always pieces of truth as well, delivered to her in the only way he thought she could handle it. He always saw the way she looked at women, heard the way she talked about them. He knew that no one, not even a supposedly straight woman, was interested in Playboy for the articles. 

He had seen this in her a long, long time ago, and more than accepted her for it. He had just been waiting for her to see it in herself. 

Abby felt her insides jolt at his words, knowing exactly what he meant by ‘someone he would be impressed by’. Someone feminine. She grabbed a random shirt off her top bunk and twisted the dry cotton up as best she could, snapping him with it like a whip before he could realize what she was doing and escape. It didn’t make quite the same impact as a wet towel would have, but it left a small mark on his arm and he yelped quietly, walking back over to his bed, rubbing the non-wound.

“Fine, don’t tell me.” He whined quietly to himself. 

But a huge part of her wanted to. They had been friends for so long, had been through so much together. It was a part of her that was still so fresh in her own mind, but she yearned to share it with him. 

“She wouldn’t be your type.” Abby took the leap, feeling strangely brave, now that he was no longer looking at her. “She actually has a brain.” 

She couldn’t help but inject some humor into her confession, hoping it would deflect from the sheer weight of it. She was admitting to her best friend for the first time that she was into women. Her lungs filled up with sawdust; waiting for him to laugh at her, to kick her out of the room, to declare his disgust toward her. To call her a liar. She busied herself with finding a shirt and putting it on, breathing in the thick air and trying not to crumble under the weight of her own words. 

Manny stilled completely when he actually heard it - entirely shocked. It was something he had suspected, sure. But suspecting and knowing are two very different beasts. He picked up his movements again very quickly, not wanting to scare her by paying too much attention to her. He knew Abby faltered under serious communication. 

“Hey, I like smart girls.” He protested, trying to keep his voice light. “I’ve dated smart girls before.” 

“Girls who read poetry?” Abby got into her natural rhythm of arguing with him, the debating tone to the conversation making it so much easier to get the words out. That’s one of the things she loved most about Manny. It was so easy to argue with him - to gripe and groan about pointless things, and still have him on her side, ride or die, when she needed him. “Girls who know about history, and art, and literature, and make thousand year old boring shit sound actually interesting when they talk about it?” 

She shoved her legs into a new pair of pants, turning to face him with a cocky smirk on her face. She was unsure why, but she felt she had the upper hand in this argument because even if she was so freshly into dating women, she had made her debut with the best woman of all. And the quality of you alone was worth more than every half cocked relationship he’d ever had. Even if she had royally fucked up any semblance of something she had with you… 

A warm smile came over Manny’s face, and she wanted to punch him. 

“Sounds like you really like her, Abs.” 

Abby wanted to melt into the floor. 

Had she really been so stupid, gushing, making her emotions so obvious? Especially when she couldn’t have you? 

Abby heaved a grand sigh, falling onto the edge of her bunk once again. She reached for her socks, pulling them on with just a tad too much aggression in her movements. 

“It doesn’t matter.” She tried to dismiss any talk of her emotions that Manny wanted to pursue with these simple words, her tone filled with utter defeat. 

But of course Manny didn’t give up that easily. He walked back across the room, standing at the top of those few stairs that separated their beds and casted his hard gaze upon her, willing her to look up at him. It did not work; she kept her eyes hard locked on the laces of her boots as she shoved her feet inside them, lacing them up. 

“It does matter.” He declared, his voice suddenly serious. “It matters if she makes you happy.” 

These words struck Abby like a hot iron, and before she knew it, a tear had escaped her eye for the third time within twenty four hours. She hated you. You had made her so fucking soft. 

Upon instinct, the moment Manny saw that tear glistening in the morning sunshine, saw the way Abby’s back slumped and her face scrunched up in anguished, he rushed to her. He sat down on the bunk next to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, inviting her to lay her head on his chest. In her weakness, she warmed into the touch quickly, leaning into him, appreciating it all too much when he placed his head on top of hers and began to rock her back and forth ever so slightly. 

They bathed in silence for a moment, both appreciating the warmth of the friendly touch, before Abby spoke.

“How do you do it?” She wondered, her voice cracking just slightly under the weight of her newly birthed emotions. “How do you fuck girls and not fall for them?” 

Manny took a sharp intake of breath, knowing his answer to this question would be very important. 

“Sometimes I do.” He took the step of being as honest with her as possible, knowing she was opening up to him and deciding to do the same. 

“What about your happiness? Doesn’t that matter too?” Abby couldn’t help but pose this question, pulling away from listening to the beating of his heart to look at him, studying his face carefully. 

He looked back at her after a moment, a small smile on his face, a very distant pain dancing in the back of his eyes. “I am happy.” He told her. She could see this to be the genuine truth, but wondered if he might be happier living the kind of life that Owen and Mel had, that Leah and Jordan had. Commitment. Someone to come home to. 

Abby wondered if she would be happier living like that too. 

“Besides,” Manny added, interrupting Abby’s stream of thoughts. “I’m not exactly… ¿Qué es? … husband material. I guess you say. I don’t need to take a good girl and ruin her.” 

Abby felt the weight of his words as if the entire Stadium had come crashing down on her. Of course he felt the same way she did. They had both been through the same fucked up path in life, more or less. He, too, had lost his mother young. Only lucky enough that the Fireflies had spread their reach south of the border and were able to take him far enough away from the devastation of that loss that he could heal from it - at least somewhat. They had both been turned into soldiers too young. The softness of their childhoods chipped away by hours of training and gun toting to prepare them for the harsh reality they lived in now. They had both been forced onto the front line when every single adult soldier at the Salt Lake Outpost was taken out by one desperate man. 

“I know exactly how you feel.” Her voice was pure melancholy, full of rue and regret for her lost childhood, and for losing you. 

“You should try to make it work with this girl.” Manny warmed her shoulder with his hand, rubbing her gently there to show how genuinely he meant this. “If she’s as special as you say she is.” 

“What if I end up ruining her?” Abby couldn’t help but speak this fear out loud, riffing off Manny’s earlier words. 

“I guess you just have to trust that your love can be bigger than the fucked up parts of you.” Manny spoke of this with a kind of certainty that came from contemplation. He had thought about this for much longer than Abby ever had. She wondered if he had ever been in love and never been brave enough to make the leap - to truly trust that the goodness of it could balance out the most fucked up parts of him. “I mean, that’s what love is, right? Showing someone the most fucked up parts of yourself and trusting they can love you enough not to look away.” 

With that last sentiment, he slowly removed his arm from around her and stood up, going back to his side of the room.

Abby didn’t know if she was brave enough to call what she felt for you ‘love’. But she also didn’t know if they lived in a world where she could afford not to. If her life would be long enough that she could spend time debating, standing on a fence where she had feelings that were muddy, not strong enough to be called ‘love’. She wanted to love you. She wanted so desperately for you to love her back. Just like she wanted to wake up in the morning, just like she wanted to come home safe every night. Just like she wanted to breathe and have oxygen enter her lungs. 

“Thank you.” She told Manny, trying not to drown in her thoughts. It was rare for them to share a moment with such genuine feelings, and she wanted him to know how precious it was to her.

He didn’t ruin it by acknowledging it. 

“I think we’re getting patrol assignments today.” He informed her. “The last shift comes in at noon so they probably want us on the truck by nine. You probably have time to go and visit your special girl,” 

She could hear the shit eating grin on his face, and resisted the urge to throw something at him. Instead, she picked herself up off the bunk and started gathering her things. 

“I’ll meet you out by the truck.” 

… 

Abby rushed through the halls, hastening her trip to the library so that she could have more time with you before she had to leave. Of course, in this haste, she nearly ran someone over. 

She was cutting through the mess hall, trying to find the quickest path, hoping she wouldn’t run into anyone who would try to start a conversation with her, when she nearly ran face first into a large metal object. She skidded to a stop, thankfully able to dance around the object as the person wheeling it, a cook (dressed in a long white apron and a hair net), stopped just short of hitting her. 

“Shit, shit, I’m so sorry!” Abby immediately began her parade of apologies, and the cook smiled at her, seeming to accept them. “I’m so sorry.” One more for good measure, she decided.

“It’s fine.” 

Her eyes glanced over the towering metal object, and she quickly realized that it was an industrial baking cart, filled with baking trays that all had one thing or another on them. Her eyes spotted a large collection of the fig tarts the two of you had eaten on that first night you had met, and something came to her. 

‘You know actually, it became common practice for women who wanted to court other women to bring their lover a basket of figs,’ 

Your words from the first day she had met you popped into her mind, giving her a cheesy, but beautiful idea. It was not the basket of fresh figs that you likely had been talking about, but it was a gesture of her affection and desire to ‘court’ you nonetheless. 

“Is it okay if I take a couple of these?” She asked, gesturing to the tray.

It was an unspoken fact that soldiers had a type of ‘privilege’ over people who performed other jobs like farming or cleaning. While each was just as important, most seemed to universally respect their protectors more. Which Abby didn’t always agree with, and didn’t enjoy flexing that privilege to jump in line or get free stuff like Manny often did. 

But she shook away any sense of guilt at the idea of just how nice this gesture would be for you. 

“Sure.” The cook told her. 

Abby fished into her pocket, finding a bandana that she really hoped was clean, and laying it flat on her palm. The cook took two, then two more of the tarts and laid them in Abby’s hand. Abby wrapped them up, considering this to be more than enough. 

“Thank you,” Abby said with a large smile, trying to hold the delicate pastries without crushing them as she raced off again, going toward the library. 

…

Abby found herself outside the library once again, wondering what it was about this hallway that filled her with so much anxiety. Probably like being on the edge of that Ferris Wheel seat, knowing she was going to make herself jump; almost all the anxiety had melted away once she landed safely in the water, but it was the anticipation. The windup before she actually bent her knees and forced herself to do it. 

This was the edge, and she stared out into the murky depths of the water as she looked through the open doors into the now brightly lit library. You had turned on all the lights, opening both doors and made it very welcoming to guests, which Abby noticed had worked. A few people were lurking about, browsing the stacks, likely trying to pick out a book before the busyness of their day started. 

She almost wanted to turn back just at the thought of being seen, but would not. She would commit to this. She would commit to you.

“I’m sorry I was such an asshole.” She mumbled quietly under her breath, practicing her apology, hoping no one would be passing by to hear her. “No. I’m sorry I was being an asshole. Fuck. Fuck.” 

Neither attempt sounded right in her ears, and she realized that no amount of rehearsal would make this go smoother. She would just have to speak from her… heart. Fuck. She was just turning into a ball of cliches, now wasn’t she? 

She entered, and it didn’t take long to find you, as you were working at the backside of the shelf you had been reorganizing the night previous. Abby actually saw that the mess of books you had left on the floor before you… well, before you fucked her brains out was actually now gone, and she wondered if you ever slept. It worried her. 

Her mind was instantly filled with more worry when she saw that you were leaning on a cane - a cane that was decorated with brightly coloured stripes of rainbow duct tape, a funny juxtaposition of brightness and beauty to the plight that was associated with the object, but a cane nonetheless. You were hobbling along with a book in one hand and the cane supporting your body with the other, your right leg seeming to be giving you trouble as you went to place a book high on the shelf. Out of pure instinct, Abby stepped toward you and took the book from your hands, placing it where she saw you wanted it. Much like she had done on the day you first met. 

You let out a tiny gasp, mostly out of surprise that she was even there. You had been so engrossed in the concentration of your task that you hadn’t even realized she had come around the corner. So seeing her gorgeous freckled bicep come into your view, watching her beautiful hand take the book from you, you almost thought it was just a sleep deprived daydream. 

When your sleepy gaze panned over to her and found that she was, indeed, standing there, you bit your lip to keep from smiling. 

She had thrown you away like trash last night, so clearly done with you after you had served your purpose, and you would not make a fool of yourself by going where you were not wanted. Your energy was better expected on other things. 

You were a fool in the first place to believe she would even want someone like you. 

You didn’t say a word to her, simply turned back to the pile of books you had placed on your stool to sort and picked up the next, reading its spine to find its place on the shelf. 

Abby frowned to herself, wondering if your lack of greeting was simply because of your clear tiredness or because she had done a great deal more damage than she ever thought when she ran out of here last night. She looked you over, trying to spot some sign in your body language, and her eyes caught a glimpse of bright purple glaring at her from the base of your neck. The mark she had left on you that you had made absolutely no effort to cover up. Were you proud of it? Or was it that lack of social awareness that you had warned her about? Not realizing that anyone who spotted that mark on your neck would know exactly what it was and know exactly what kind of encounter it came from? That their minds would picture you filthy, whining… 

Abby almost wished she could write her name on it. On you. So every Wolf who looked at you would know you were hers. A shiver ran through her at the thought alone. 

Of course, there were more pressing issues to address at the current moment. 

“What’s wrong with your leg?” Rather than greeting you, she chose these as her first words, still finding this to be a very potent thing in her mind. What could have happened to you between the last time she’d seen you and now that caused such an injury to your leg? 

Especially when you limped back over to the shelf with your next book, and she wanted to snatch it from you as she watched you struggle to shelf it with one hand. She wanted you to stop working if you were injured, in pain. But of course, that’s not how the WLF worked. That’s not how contributing worked. That’s not how being disabled worked. If you had to stop everything every single time you were in pain - you would never be able to contribute anything at all. You would be as much of a burden as everyone accused you of being. 

“It’s nothing.” You were quick to give her your usual response. A response that shoved people off, that lifted them of any liability or worry with those two simple words. People so often took caring as an act of social performance rather than a genuine feeling that came from the heart, so responding with a fabrication, a social bandaid that would end their ‘caring’ and get them to leave you alone faster usually got you through life just fine. 

You could take care of yourself just fine if the only ‘care’ others were willing to give you was sorrow about how the weight of your problems affected them, and a few fleeting, recycled words every now and then. 

“Don’t do that.” Abby’s voice was tired, filled with the defeated hope that she would not have to fight too hard to get the truth out of you. “Please… just, don’t. I asked because I’m concerned. You don’t have to bullshit me.” 

Your eyes fell to a paperback on one of the shelves in front of you - the spine of the book so used up and cracked that you couldn’t even read the title on it at all. It reminded you of your own. You traced your fingers along the cracks for a moment, thinking about every day you had been in pain in your lifetime and not let a single murmur of it pass through your lips. You wondered if that pain still lived somewhere inside you, festering, the way an Infected can be trapped inside a building for years and just grow into the walls, or if it had been released somehow - like poison gas eventually dissipates into the atmosphere. 

“It’s just my knee.” Your mouth still fell into the impossible trap of using lesser language, using words that took bounds off the measure of your pain, devalued it before the thought even fully formed on your lips. “It dropped again.”

“Dropped?” Abby was immediately curious at the use of this word. She had never heard of this type of injury in all her time studying medicine. But perhaps it was no official term like the ones she had always read in medical journals, instead a word you had found to describe something you found happening to your own body. 

“Dropped. Dislocated. Ya know, popped out.” You tried your best to find a word that she would understand, reaching over with your free hand to lift up the leg of the wide, loose cargo pants you were wearing, showing her the knee brace you had strapped onto your bad leg, almost desperate to show her proof. As if your word alone was not good enough. Abby stared down the brace, and the purpling, swollen flesh of your kneecap that was poking out from between the straps. She wanted desperately to sit you down somewhere and take a proper look at this herself, or force you to go to the medical bay and put you in the hands of someone she trusted, at least. “It happened first a long time ago, and it acts up sometimes. That’s why I keep the cane around. It’s no big deal. I set it back in myself, it’ll be fine.” 

Even though your various rouge body parts liked to act up for no reason at all sometimes, and you could blame it on everything from sneezing too hard to the whether (which was quite a lovely trigger to have when living in the rain slogged hell that was Seattle); a huge part of you knew that spending god knows how long on your knees the night before, paying no mind to the screaming pain it was causing you, might have had something to do with the untimely dislocation and total collapse of your knee that happened as you were washing your hair in the shower earlier that morning. It was not your first sex related injury, and it would likely not be your last. Just (woefully) your last with Abby. 

The same thoughts were flashing through Abby’s mind; wondering if she had been the cause of this, wondering why she had not been more delicate with you, wondering why she had not treated your gorgeous satin body with all the tenderness and care that it so clearly needed, and deserved. 

She tried her best to push down the overwhelming feeling of guilt, the feeling that if she ever put her hands on you again, she would shatter you into a million pieces, and attempted to follow Manny’s actually good advice. 

“Can we talk?” 

Abby released these words upon you as a request to address her shortfallings from the night previous, that she might have an audience with you in order to explain why she had fucked up so badly. If you would let her. 

You turned your back to her, going to the stack of books again, willful not to look at her. 

“We are talking.” 

Your response was absolutely void of emotion. Abby was unsure if it was because the intention of her words was lost on you; and you were simply stating the facts, or because you were truly refusing her. 

She felt the need to push it, to pose her question in a different way just to hear your response. 

“Can we go somewhere a bit… private, please?” She thought about her words carefully, hoping you would truly understand what she meant.

If you turned down her proposal, she would leave, and never speak to you again. She would not bother you with her silly feelings, not let herself ruin you. But she wanted to try. Wanted to try a hell of a lot more than she had ever tried with Owen. 

You were entirely unsure why, but you decided to indulge her. 

Maybe you were too curious about what she wanted to say, that all too sensitive part of you screaming for closure, at least. One tiny part of your brain that always held hope high in the light telling you that maybe last night had been a misunderstanding, that she had come to tell you she was in love with you too and she wanted to be with you forever. 

You always cursed that part of your brain for getting your hopes up, only to have them come crashing down when those thoughts never came true. She mostly likely just wanted to make sure things between you weren’t awkward so that she could come and get books on occasion, or probably even fuck you with no strings attached. Because the sex had been amazing, you had no doubt about that. 

You limped back to the office, Abby following closely behind you, waiting patiently as you got the key out of one of your pockets and opened the door. She followed you inside and closed the door behind herself as you flicked on the lightswitch. It was a small space, but perhaps not as tight as you had exaggerated it to be. More than the width of Abby’s impressive arm span if she stood in the middle and tried to touch the walls. And it did not feel nearly as suffocatingly cramped as it should have with all the things you had packed into it. 

A cot tight along one of the walls that was made up with a rainbow bedspread that Abby guessed was originally intended for a child. But found it to be oddly adorable in your space, rather than too childish. Especially when you went over and sat proudly on it, next to the heart shaped pillow and well worn white teddy bear, making no effort to hide either of those things from her. 

Her eyes took in the wall behind you, and saw an array of pencil markings on the drywall that she guessed to be another one of your masterpieces coming together, completely for your own enjoyment, with a palette of paint samplings marked next to it. The pencil was too faint for her to make out what the drawing would be, but she was curious what subject would interest you enough to put on your own wall when you were not tasked with painting Wolves or maps for Isaac.

Though she had come in here for a specific reason, she couldn’t help in taking in the rest of the scenery; the many posters you had adorning the other walls, sporting colourful images she couldn’t really place, the desk you had tucked into the other wall, likely a space where your brilliant mind released all its beautiful ideas. The file cabinets you had squished in, likely converted into drawers for your own storage, covered in an array of cartoony stickers to make the drab olive green metal look more appealing to you, with a plethora of your personal belongings lovingly placed on top. Little wooden boxes that made Abby curious as to what was inside, tiny dolls with strange faces, many, many, many stuffed animals, a stack of notebooks thicker than she could probably lift - including some of the ones she had seen inside that box over at the FOB. 

Abby was in awe of this museum of your personality, each tiny piece telling her more about you, a warm display of the beautiful, bright person that you were inside. She wanted to relax in here, to unwind in this little piece of the world that you had made beautiful and wondrous, especially compared to the dark and decay of the outside. She wanted to be with you. 

“I want you.” She spoke the feeling that was most natural inside her, hoping you would understand this messy declaration of her love.

You scoffed at her, immediately misunderstanding the intention behind her words. “I’m sorry, but I’m really not in the mood right now.” You made your line of thinking clear, grabbing your cane from where you had leaned it against the cot beside you. You went to stand, attempting to leave, to escape the conversation altogether. 

If all she ever wanted from you was sex, maybe you could become okay with that. But it would take a few days to adjust to the idea that your soul, the true essence of who you were as a person had been left behind by yet another in favour of your unmatchable libidio and shameless mind. 

Abby felt her insides jolt with urgency. She put down the awkward sac of the bandana, the likely crumbling fig tarts that she had been holding in her hands onto the cot and put her hands up in front of you, a passable wall should you choose to go around her or even ask her to get out of the way. 

You rolled your eyes at her. But you were too tired to remain standing on your bad knee for the moment, so you sat back down again, eyes glancing over at what she had put down. A piece of the cloth had fallen away and revealed one of those fig tarts - you almost let off a smile. But refused to read into the presence of the object in the room. 

“You misunderstood me-” Abby was desperate to try again, and before she could even delve into her thoughts, you cut her off. 

“I never fucking understand!” This was not a rage directed at her. It was one that had been building inside you for years. Every tiny interaction you had with someone that failed put a penny in the jar of your hatred toward yourself; one that cost you more and more. One that always made you wonder why you couldn’t just function like a normal human being. Inside or out. Abby’s words just so happened to be the penny that broke the jar. 

Your throat was tightening up rapidly and you knew you were at great risk of producing tears, as much as you fucking hated the idea of crying in front of her. 

Abby saw this a mile away, even as you stared with determination at the doorknob, and she sought closeness with you. She decided it was her turn to worship you, even if not in the same way. To get on her knees and show you a worthiness you had never been shown before. She crouched low on the floor beside the cot, shoving her knees under the edge of it to get as close to you as possible, slotting herself between your knees (carefully, desperate not to cause you any pain). She gently wrapped her fingers around your hand, seeking a way to comfort you, and you slipped out of the touch with a harsh flick of your wrist. 

Abby felt rejection creeping up on her, but had no idea that you distanced yourself from touch on the principle of trying to keep up some show of strength. When people tried to comfort you with hugs or back rubs or hand holding, that was when you usually completely fell apart. And this was when most people ran, scared. Seeing your entire being shredded by uncontrollable wails, endless floods of tears, and screams that tore up your lungs that you often could not stop until you either ran out of energy or felt true, genuine comfort. Which was rare.

You were an ugly crier. A hurricane crier. 

And you would not let Abby witness that. 

“I’m so sorry about last night.” Even if you did not want her, she still owed you the decency of an apology. Her breath touched your face and you still would not look at her - could not. 

“I… I understand.” In a lot of ways, you did. Even though you were living inside your mind and somehow making the same mistakes over and over again, you had come to learn from them. You had come to sympathize with the people you were responsible for hurting. It was like being the driver in a car crash over and over again. Though you could not avoid the danger of the oncoming vehicle or the trees you crashed into, you could understand the exact moment where everything went wrong. “I can be a lot. Too much all at once. You can take a break, or… you don’t have to talk to me anymore if you don’t want to. You don’t have to be my friend just cause you… like, think I need one. I’m not lonely. You don’t have to apologize, or try and let me down easy or some shit. It’s not like we ever had an official sort of thing, anyway.” 

You laid it all out very plain for her, your voice getting sharp toward the end. Your eyes still hard locked off to the side. 

“You really think I wouldn’t want to be with you?” Abby thought she had a pretty good understanding of your perspective from the way you had stated it - you had been so trampled, so badly mistreated in the past that you genuinely thought it was a chore for her to spend time around you. Rather than the bright light, the relaxing vacation from the fucked up horrors of the world that you were. Time with you was precious. And between her responsibilities to the WLF and the nagging human need for sleep (which you apparently didn’t fucking have), she knew she would never be able to get enough of it. 

You finally turned to her, feeling brave. Wanting to make your point absolutely clear so that she would finally get it and leave you the fuck alone. Your eyes were glassy, reflecting the pain of a thousand rejections in their depths, and it made Abby’s heart twist for you. 

“Why would you?” You griped, voice so bitter that Abby tasted your words on her tongue. “I am a handful, Abigail. I am… too much.” You were ripe with sorrow, sounding as if you mourned for Abby. Mourned for yourself. That you could never just have a simple, normal relationship. Not even a simple interaction. “I have no edges. My excitement is boundless, my affection is boundless, my anxiety is boundless, my pain can be…” You took a breath. “…boundless. I don’t even know where the end of me is, so I don’t know why you’d want to spend your time trying to figure it out.” 

Maybe that’s why this worked so well. Abby was all edges. All hardness. All pure ground, all sandy bottom floor to balance out the ocean you seemed to spend your days drowning in. 

Abby leaned in, gently pressing her forehead against yours. You did not pull away from this touch. With your best, most practiced effort, you managed to keep all your tears muddy on your eyelashes as you squeezed them together, your eyes wet but not quite breached. 

“You’re not too much for me.” Her words were a mere breath against your lips, quiet. 

But it was a screeching statement that shattered the very confines of your heart. And before you had a moment to doubt, or let that boundless anxiety take hold, you reached a hand around to the back of her neck and pulled her lips just that extra inch to yours. The kiss was a lesson in passion and purity - her fingers gripping tight onto your pants to ground herself, lips so warm on each others’, flooding as much feeling as possible to the other to scream that you were needed, you were wanted, you were loved; all without saying a word. 

“I want your basket of figs.” Abby mumbled against your lips when you pulled away for a breath. She kissed you again, hot and quick. “I want your wine.” Pressed her lips against yours, slipping her tongue out slightly to get a taste of you. “And whatever other stupid shit from that poem I can’t remember that means I’m gonna be your lady lover,” 

Your head was absolutely dizzy, partly from the lack of oxygen, and partly from the whiplash of going from such stomach churning anxiety and wallowing in the relashing of your insecurities to this insane high of knowing that she did like you back. Loved you back. Holy fuck. 

For Abby, she was bathing in all of this. The grin she could feel on your lips as she hovered so close to you, not wanting to pull away, never wanting to pull away, the small injection of pride she felt at calling herself a lady lover for the first time out loud. It was a small step, sure, but she had been grappling with her identity, tossing and turning, awake in bed for days. So she decided to give herself some credit for doing something that felt this right so quickly. 

It might be awhile before she went around parading this new version of herself; before she told any more of her friends, or decided to hold your hand in public, or even kiss you beyond the sacred walls of this literary palace. And she hoped you would be okay with that. Some part of her just knew that you would be. Knew you were a kind and accepting soul who wouldn’t judge her for not wanting to be judged by others, even if it was clear that you blatantly did not give a fuck what other people thought of you. 

Abby brushed her hands along the bedspread, going to wrap her arms around you in a tight hold, and as her fingers brushed the crummy crust of the fig tarts, she suddenly remembered everything about her hectic morning, and the fact that she did eventually have to leave this brilliant little colorful world you had created.

“Fuck.” She mumbled under her breath, pulling away from you. 

“What is it?” You looked up at her with genuine curiosity as she stood, unsure what the exact tone of this ‘fuck’ was. 

“I have to go.” She informed you, disappointment clear in her voice. “I’m getting a patrol assignment and I have to be out at the FOB soon.” 

“Oh.” You said quietly, trying to conceal your own disappointment. It did not work. It was foolish to think that you would be able to simply bask in the light of this newfound love. You both had responsibilities, jobs to do. You shot her a smile, though. “Stay safe.” 

It was the best greeting you could think of, seeing as ‘have a good day’ didn’t exactly go along with killing Infected and potentially running into Scars. 

“Thank you.” She gave you a warm smile back. Just this; the feeling of having someone waiting for her when she got home. She hadn’t even left yet, and it was already overwhelming her with that beautifully disgusting ooey gooey feeling. She could acknowledge that it added more risk, too. Having more to lose. Every danger made just a little bit more so. But you were worth it. Having the thought of you in the back of her head as she fought - it would make her stronger, not weaker. 

“Oh.” She had almost forgotten the one thing she had come here with. She picked up the ill wrapped fig tarts and placed them in your lap, loving the beaming sunshine smile that came over your face. “These are for you. I know it’s not like a basket of fresh figs or whatever, but I thought you’d get the point.” 

“I love it, Abigail.” You looked right at her, using that name that made her so weak. 

She absolutely couldn’t resist, leaning down and stealing one last hot kiss from your lips before she had to leave. 

“Oh god, I am gonna be so late.” It was supposed to be a complaint, but it fell short of having any ill will as her lips pressed back into yours just one last time. (One last time, she swore.) 

You pulled away with a wet smack, almost wanting to shove her out the door to make sure she got on her way. But you just couldn’t bring yourself to. 

“I really wish you didn’t have to go.” You mumbled against her lips. 

“It’ll be worth the wait, I promise.” There was almost a hint of smoke with this promise. A hint at something much less innocent than pastries or shelving books together. You tried your best not to get heated right before she had to leave. You tried your best not to recall that image of her - naked, breasts having with her moans for you, glistening with sweat, muscles trembling under your efforts. 

Fuck. too late. 

“You are always worth the wait, Abigail Anderson.” Now your voice held that same tone. Corrupt with sin. Just the slightest bit thicker, like honey. And you knew she could tell exactly what was going through your mind. 

“I love the way you say my name. It’s like poetry.” Abby could see the heat rising up on your cheeks, and though she absolutely fucking hated that she would have to leave you when she knew there was wetness gathering in your panties, it made her feel bold. She leaned down and whispered something in your ear that ignited a hard burning flame in your core. “I can’t wait to hear you scream it when I get my tongue between your thighs." 

And with that absolutely devious move, one that nearly measured up to your own, she stole one of the fig tarts off your lap, and disappeared out the office door - leaving you soaked, and absolutely stunned. 

… 

Abby was relieved when she got to the loading bay and Manny was standing there, waiting for her. He didn’t appear to be particularly pissed off, as though he had been waiting for a long time, so that was a good sign. 

“What are we waiting for?” Abby asked, as casually as possible, trying to make it seem as though she didn’t think she was the one who was late. 

“Owen’s getting the truck from the garage out back.” He told her. 

Owen. 

There was some part of her that was absolutely dreading seeing him, and some part that felt… almost free from him now. Like that weird hold he had over her, having been her first boyfriend, her first kiss, her first time, her first everything - that was gone now. Having all her secrets in his back pocket to tease her with whenever he liked; you had snatched those secrets away from him and rewritten them with your finely skilled tongue. And even though Abby hadn’t known you for that long, she trusted you with them so much more. Yeah, part of her loved Owen. In some fucked up way. You couldn’t spend as much of your life with a person as she had with him and not love them in some sense. 

But she had come to see more and more over the years that he was an asshole. And she wished so much that she had been able to love you first. That she didn’t have to give you all the recycled, used up parts of herself that he had gotten to, and damaged first. 

“So…” Manny turned to Abby with a smirk on his face that was so absolutely telling. She wanted to shush him before he even asked the question. “How did it go?” 

Abby rolled her eyes at him. “I’m not telling.” 

But they had been friends for far too long, and he knew that upbeat tone of voice, and that half smile that couldn’t have been beaten off her face with a stick. It had gone amazingly. 

“Ah.” He said quietly. Then, deciding to prod at her, he put on an exaggerated, girly tone of voice. “We were up late and you have time to squeeze in a morning booty call. Do you even sleep?” He turned her much earlier words back on her, ringing out a laugh at his own joke. 

She was feeling light, feeling like nothing could ruin the bright aura that her visit with you provided, so she decided to play into him. She grabbed him by the arm, quickly spinning him around and pinning him against the thick doorway of the industrial garage door. His pack was on the ground, giving her the perfect leverage to hold him like this. Of course, as lightly as she could, using the minimal amount of strength - a common thing the two of them had done for years now. Play fighting was actually playing with them. His laughter became even more rapturous, enjoying the rise he’d gotten out of her.

“It wasn’t a booty call.” She corrected, fishing into the back of his pants, grabbing the waistband of his underwear, making her threat immediately clear. “No sass from you, or it’s wedgie city, pendejo.” 

“Don’t!” He was still laughing, almost too much so to even argue with her, wiggling hard in an attempt to escape her hold. 

“Children!” They had been so caught up in this little wrestling match that they didn’t even notice Owen pulling up with the truck. He had gotten out of the driver’s seat to address the immature display he found before him. (Of course, he was no expert on maturity, but still felt the need to scold them.) “I would say ‘don’t make me turn this car around’, but you haven’t even made into the fucking car yet,” 

Abby released Manny, the two of them still smiling wide. 

“Relax, grandpa.” Abby teased Owen as they loaded into the truck, beaming her unusual, newly infatuated smile down at him. 

He stared up at her from his spot standing on the concrete, immediately sensing something strange about her behaviour, her posture, her entire being. She was different, so very different than the last time he had seen her. He almost didn’t like it. Like the ghost of another person had slipped into her body, possessing her. 

“What’s gotten into you, Abs?” Owen couldn’t help but ask the question, looking her up and down, looking for some sign of what the fuck had happened to her. 

Abby thought about it. Maybe she would tell him. Maybe she would get to rub it in his face, how much better to her you were than him. How much better you were for her. But now didn’t feel like the right time. 

For now, she shrugged it off. 

“I don’t know.” She said, sounding very unconvincing. “I’ve been eating right. Getting my fruit in. Like… figs and stuff.” She smiled to herself, having the dangerous thrill of a secret. 

She and Manny exchanged a look of knowing as she sat down in the truck, and Owen got back in the front seat before they drove off.


End file.
